Supply slipping, Centre to speed up Covid-19 vaccine delivery to states

Vaccine makers asked to send more doses to central government on priority

The Centre is planning to expedite delivery of Covid-19 vaccines to states that have low inventory and also increase sourcing from vaccine makers over the next few weeks.

Next month, the health ministry is likely to receive 60 million of the 100 million doses of Covishield it had ordered from Serum Institute of India (SII).

A senior government official indicated that for states like Maharashtra and Karnataka, which are vaccinating at high speed, more doses will be dispatched soon. “We have given 7.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Maharashtra so far, of which around 4.9 doses have been consumed,” the official said. “The state is currently not using more than 200,000 doses a day. At this rate, it has about 11 days of stock left (around 2.3 million doses).”

The person said 2.2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines would be dispatched to Maharashtra soon.

For Karnataka, the Centre is dispatching 1.2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine over the next two weeks. The state has about three days of stock now — around 700,000 doses. Karnataka has received 3.7 million doses of vaccine so far from the Centre, of which 2.9 million doses have been used, the official said.

“We are making arrangements to supply some more doses to Karnataka from the Government Medical Store Depot as their speed of vaccination is high,” the official, who did not wish to be named, said.

Vaccine makers have been asked to prioritise deliveries for the central government.

Another senior official in the know of the developments said they expected to receive 60 million doses of Covishield from SII in April. This is practically the entire monthly production at SII’s Pune site. SII has already supplied around 65 million doses to the Centre, of which around 10 million have come from Gavi, the vaccine alliance, and have been free of cost.

“Exports have not been banned or restricted as such, but the firms have been asked to prioritise deliveries to the Centre as the demand picks up,” the official quoted above said. “Bharat Biotech has so far supplied around 10 per cent or so of the total vaccines procured. It is also ramping up production.”

Bharat Biotech, which was making around 10 million doses per month, has increased production to 40 million doses a month from mid-March. SII, too, is expanding capacity by almost 40 per cent in the April-June quarter.

As they boost the inoculation drive, some districts are facing a supply shortage. Mumbai, for instance, has only five days of vaccine inventory left. Health ministry officials are of the opinion that states are not allocating the vaccines efficiently amongst districts.

“Some districts are doing better than the others. There may be stock lying in some districts that can be reallocated to others if the need arises. But, this decision is for the states to take,” said an official.

Sources in at least two state health departments, however, said reallocating vaccines is easier said than done. “It is logistically challenging to reallocate vaccines amongst districts,” one state government official said, adding that they were waiting for more supplies from the Centre.

States are of the view that since staggered orders are being placed with vaccine makers, there is a supply problem. “Bulk orders would help iron out the bottlenecks. Vaccine makers also have international commitments. With more clarity from the health ministry, they can plan vaccine production better,” said a Maharashtra official.