Centre says Covid vaccine wastage in India at 6.5%, calls for optimal usage

With India witnessing a vaccine wastage of 6.5 per cent, the government has asked states to promote optimal utilisation and drastically reduce the wastage, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said on Wednesday.

Several states are recording much higher levels of wastage than the national average, such as Telangana, which is losing 17.5 per cent of vaccines; Andhra Pradesh (11.6 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (9.4 per cent). The government has made available 75 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines so far across all states, according to the health ministry. 

“Vaccines are public he­alth goods. They are invaluable commodities. Any redu­c­tion in wastage means you end up inoculating more peo­ple and therefore chances of disrupting the chain of infection grows,” Bhushan said. 

Some states which are performing better in management of their vaccine supply include Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand — with less than 2 per cent of doses going to waste. 

On increasing the dosage interval from four to eight weeks for the Covishield vaccine, V K Paul, member-health, NITI Aayog, said the interim advice of the national technical advisory group on immunisation is that there is no change.

“The group is also looking at the India data from the Indian bridging study done on 1,600 individuals. If there is any revision of opinion based on some change in data then the government will embrace it... This is a work in progress,” Paul said.  

As of 9 am on March 17, India had administered 35.1 million doses or which 13.8 million were given to those above 60 and over 45 years of age with comorbidities. 

However, the coverage of vaccination differs widely across states. Average doses administered per day were more than 152,000 in Rajasthan and a little over 28,000 in Delhi and Haryana. 

The national average for daily doses is around 1.3 million with the highest single day record of 3 million doses.