Maharashtra: Covid vaccination drive to resume today in districts

Vaccination for people in the 18-44 age bracket will continue in selected five centres in each district.

Of over 2.1 crore vaccines with the Centre, Maharashtra has been allocated 23.27 lakh for the first fortnight of May.

State officials said with this stock, they can only vaccinate 1.55 lakh people a day on an average, lower than the usual count of 3-5 lakh daily.

On Sunday, Maharashtra vaccinated only 47,693 people due to vaccine shortage.

In Kolhapur, people complained of walking into shut down facilities due to zero vaccine stock.

Mumbai had to close its vaccination centres for four days, Hingoli officials said they shut the vaccination drive for five days.
Currently, Maharashtra has close to two lakh doses left to immunise people in the 18-44 age group; it awaits 18 lakh more doses this
month.

The state has a capacity to immunise 8 lakh people a day, but vaccine shortage has hampered the speed since last one week.

On Sunday, close to 1,000 health workers, over 2,600 front line workers were vaccinated. A total of 44,084 people aged above 18 years were also immunised.

Maharashtra has touched 1.63 crore immunisations, including both first and second doses. At least 1.36 crore have received their first dose and 26.6 lakh have got their second dose.

Maharashtra recorded 48,621 fresh cases and reported 567 deaths on Monday, it has 6.58 lakh active cases.

The state aims to speed up its vaccination from June, when supply is expected to become smoother, as a measure against the possible third wave of the ongoing pandemic.