Over 100 Kolkata municipal corporation vaccination units shut today, tomorrow – ET HealthWorld

“During Monday’s vaccination drive, our entire stock was exhausted. The queue for the second dose at the 102 CVCs and 50 mega centres is growing longer everyday. As of Monday evening, there are 1.5 lakh first-dose recipients who are now due to get the second dose. By Wednesday, this figure will cross 2 lakh as we don’t have any stock to give jabs on Tuesday and Wednesday,” a civic health department official said.

KMC currently has over 36,000 doses of Covaxin, which will last for at least three days. A couple of weeks ago, the civic health department had faced a Covaxin supply crisis as well. But that is now over. It is Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India in Pune, that has now emerged as a major worry because an overwhelming majority of citizens had been administered Covishield when they took the first jab.

KMC officials said after the Covishield second-dose backlog is cleared, the civic body will need around 35,000 doses daily to meet the demand.

The development comes at a time when researchers have claimed that mixing Covaxin and Covishield doses will not reduce the vaccines’ effectiveness. However, many are sceptical and may not agree to a cocktail of vaccines even if the Union health ministry issues a notification to that effect.

A health official said the scepticism is not misplaced given that the Centre had suddenly increased the gap between the first and second doses of Covishield from 4-6 weeks in March to 6-8 weeks in April, and then again to 12-16 weeks in May, claiming that this was following studies that had proved a longer time between the two doses would make the vaccine more effective.

However, a section of researchers claimed the only reason why the gap was increased was to buy time to manufacture more vaccines for the second dose.

KMC health officials said they hoped to receive a large consignment of Covishield soon to tide over the crisis. While the civic body was planning to change the ratio of first and second doses, which had been heavily skewed in favour of the latter to meet the second-dose demand, the crisis will force the civic body to abandon any such thoughts and continue to allocate a bulk of the vaccines to second-dose recipients when fresh stock arrives.