NEW DELHI: AMID the spurt in Covid cases and assurances from the government about readiness to deal with any emergency, Covid vaccination are largely out of stock at government facilities. According to sources, government vaccination centres are out of doses though it’s available at private hospitals. Officials said that multiple factors including the expiry of doses and hesitancy from the beneficiaries are behind the situation.
“A request was sent to the Centre for allotment of more Covid vaccine doses. The old stock has an expiry period, so all doses were used up. Besides, people are not showing keenness to get the booster dose for multiple reasons, so there aren’t many takers anyway,” a senior official said. “Many people who have got all three shots taken are also getting infected with Covid. Reports claiming side effects of vaccines, including on the heart, is also a factor in keeping people away.
And, a section of people also feel that now they have got immunity from previous infection or first two doses, so they are not going for the booster dose. So, it’s an interplay of multiple factors due to which less number of people have so far got booster doses in the city, which is about 25 per cent of the eligible population in this category,” he added.
However, a senior doctor in the health department said that precautionary doses are available at private hospitals and those who haven’t got their booster dose administered, should get it done. Meanwhile, the Delhi government’s health department has asked the hospitals and polyclinics to scale up testing citing a steep rise in daily cases of Covid cases being observed in the past few days, officials said. “Authorities at these facilities have been told that anyone who visits such facilities and exhibits ILI (influenza-like illness) symptoms, such as fever, cough, body ache is to be tested as cases have risen and the daily count is growing steadily,” a senior official informed. Delhi logged 733 Covid cases -- the highest in over seven months -- on Friday, with a positivity rate of 19.93 per cent, according to data shared by the city government’s health department.
