More than 1 million doses of Covishield vaccine are likely to get expired without being administerd.
Government’s managerial inefficinecy has led to likely expiration of 1 million doses of Covishield vaccine. The vaccine that was developed by Serum Institute of India and granted as grant under Covax facility is to be administered by 3rd week of July. However, it seems likely impossible to jab more than 70 thousand individuals per day by then to fully utilise the available vaccine resource.
As covid pandemic started to slow down, the vaccination program also gradually started to slow as a result huge stock of vaccine has piled up in Department of Health Service. The department statistics still shows 8.5 million doses of vaccine in stock which also have a expiration date. The health ministry’s statistics show 99.1% people have taken 1st dose, 87.4% have taken second dose and 32% have taken booster dose.
This means government need to rapidly administer second and booster dose to public so that further vaccine doesn’t get expired. Earlier, 67 thousand doses of Moderna vaccines were also expired.
