Kerala has received two lakh more doses of Covaxin today (Tuesday) after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote to the Centre the previous evening requesting urgent supply of 50 lakh doses of the Covid-19 vaccine ‘in the next couple of days’ to help the state carry on uninterrupted its intensive vaccination drive.

Health Minister KK Shailaja said here that the regional vaccine store at Thiruvananthapuram received 68,000 doses, while the Ernakulam store received 78,000 and Kozhikode, 54,000.

Earlier, the Chief Minister had written to Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, that the state had ‘made a 45-action plan and are currently administering around two lakh doses per day, which will be further scaled up to 2.5-3 lakh doses’ to curb the viral spread.

Yet to get additional supplies

The state had so far received 56,84,360 doses of the vaccine including 54,40,740 of Covishield and 2,43,620 of Covaxin. It had administered 48,24,505 doses till April 11 (Sunday). The stock left with it was sufficient for conducting vaccination for three more days only, the Chief Minister had said.

The shortage of vaccine had been brought to the notice of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare by the Chief Secretary as well as the Principal Secretary, Health. But the state was yet to get any additional supply of the vaccine, with available stocks running dry in almost all districts.

Vaccine stock depleting

Meanwhile, the state Health Minister said that the state had administered more than 2.38 lakh doses on Monday alone. This dwarfed the previous day’s figure of 67,000 persons by a huge margin. It was creditable that the state could cover so many persons in a short time as part of the intensive drive.

Vaccination took place at 1,826 sites, including 1,402 government hospitals and 424 private hospitals. But the Minister said she is worried about the depleting vaccine stock, which had come down to just six lakh doses. More people would be vaccinated as and when the State received more doses.

The Covid-19 transmission had gathered even more pace in the state on Monday with the test positivity rate galloping to 12.53 per cent (10.75 per cent on the previous day). Latest available statistics revealed that new cases and hospital admissions were rising with the disease transmission the highest in northern districts.

Active case pool on the rise

The state added 5,692 new cases to its tally on Monday when 47,596 samples, much fewer than the previous day’s numbers, were tested. The cumulative case burden now stands at 11,72,882 cases.

The active case pool has almost doubled since March 22 when it had reported around 24,000 cases.

Addition of 11 deaths to the official list took the cumulative Covid-19 toll in the state to 4,794.

As for recoveries, a comparably fewer number of 2,474 were reported with cumulative recoveries logging in at 11,20,174. New hospital admissions rose to 1,270 with 14,493 persons being put on home or institutional quarantine during the day. A total of 1,68,827 people are currently in home or institutional quarantine in the state.

 

 

 

 

 

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW