States shying away from administering Bharat Bio's Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin

A month on, 21 states and UTs have not administered a single shot of the vaccine

A month into the Covid-19 immunisation drive, as many as 21 states and Union Territories (UTs) have not administered a single shot of Covaxin from Bharat Biotech, according to data. 

While some states like Chhattisgarh have opted not to use the Covaxin doses allotted to them, most UTs and northeastern states have not been allotted the vaccine by the Centre. For those that have used Covaxin, the rate of usage is much lower compared to the number of Covishield vaccines used.

Gujarat administered the maximum number of Covaxin shots in the first round – 106,043 doses were given to beneficiaries in the state. States like West Bengal have given only 720 doses of Covaxin to beneficiaries as on February 9. Uttar Pradesh has used the most number of Covishield doses – 664,084. This information has been culled from data shared by the Union health ministry with the Lok Sabha.  

Many states like Chattisgarh, Goa, Ker­ala, the north-eastern states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim, along with Uttarakhand, are among those that have not used a single dose of Covaxin. 

Also, UTs like Ladakh, Chandi­garh, Daman & Diu as well as Dadra and Nagar Haveli have also not used the ind­igenous vaccine but the AstraZeneca vaccine Covishield. States such as Chatt­isgarh and UTs like Chandi­garh had indicated in January that they were not comfortable with using Covaxin on their health care and frontline workers until complete data on efficacy of the vaccine was available. 

However, of the 23 deaths reported in people post-immunisation, most had taken the Covishield jab. The government has maintained that none of the deaths have been causally linked to Covid-19 vaccination and highlighted that both vaccines are ‘safe’. According to data released by the government last week, the percentage of deaths is as low as 0.0003 per cent. 

States did not have much of a choice when it came to picking one vaccine over the other. A senior government official in Gujarat said, “We were not given a choice. We were told how many doses of which vaccine we were getting from the Centre. We had to plan our vaccination sites acco­rdingly as each site would have only one type of vaccine for logistical purposes.” On the other hand, some states like Chatt­isgarh had categorically said they were not in favour of using Covaxin in clinical trials. 

IndiaSpend highlighted, in an article, that India administered the Covid-19 vaccine to 8.4 million people (as on February 15) in one month since launching the world’s largest vaccination programme on January 16. 

“At this rate per month, India is likely to miss its target of vaccinating 250 million people by July,” the author, Anoo Bhuyan, said in the piece. In comparison, the US already vaccinated 52.8 million, UK around 15.6 million and China around 40.5 million.