Vaccine centres at private hospitals are seeing a decline in the number of persons availing themselves of paid vaccination against COVID-19 of late. As a result, many private hospitals are left with a huge number of vaccine stocks compared to the daily requirement. Many hospitals shut down vaccine centres once their stocks were fully utilised.
On Wednesday, only 45 hospitals in the State administered vaccines at their respective centres while the government provided vaccination at over 2,756 centres. A total of 2.52 lakh doses were administered in the state as of 7 p.m., according to the CoWIN portal.
“The number of persons seeking vaccine at our hospital has come down drastically. At present, we are administering about 20 to 30 doses per day, and we have a stock of over 500 doses,” said the representative of a hospital in Vijayawada.
Another hospital in the city has been administering less than 10 doses a day and has over 100 doses in stock, according to a source. The same was the situation with many hospitals in the city and elsewhere, as demand for vaccines among the public has come down owing to increased coverage of the first dose.
In Anantapur and Kurnool districts, only five private hospitals were permitted to administer the vaccine all put together have vaccinated less than one lakh people. Three of the five hospitals have stopped vaccination and have no stocks left. Immunisation officers K. Visveswara Reddy and P. Yugandhar of these districts said that they were tracing the persons who had taken the first dose in these hospitals so that they could be given the second dose at government facilities.
In the Prakasam district, as many as 7.17 lakh people in the district had not taken even a single dose of vaccine. The uncovered population was a high 5.36 lakh in the age group of 18 to 44, according to a report compiled by the health officials. The district had a stock of two lakh doses of vaccine, according to the officials.
Across the State, over 86% of the eligible population received at least one dose of vaccine against COVID while 60% of the eligible population were fully vaccinated. With poor response to vaccine drives, the State government is reaching out to persons yet to be vaccinated by the door to door visits involving ward and village volunteers, ANMs and others.
A total of 5.79 crore doses were administered, including 3.41 crore first doses and 2.38 crore second doses, so far.
Meanwhile, the State’s cumulative COVID toll and tally increased to 14,430 and 20,71,831 respectively. The test positivity rate of the 3.02 crore samples tested so far at 6.85% and the daily positivity rate was below 1% for the three weeks. The number of recoveries stands at 20,55,226 with a recovery rate of 99.20%.
