Misbah Ali

The national capital has once again run out of COVID-19 vaccines as a result, several government-run vaccination centers in Delhi remained closed on July 13, 2021.

Citing the major shortage of the vaccines, health minister Satyendar Jain said that the shortage has forced the government to repeatedly shut down vaccination centers.

“The vaccine availability is low. We received 1.5 lakh Covishield vaccines yesterday (July 12, 2021), which will be used up by tomorrow, after which centers will be closed. We have to repeatedly shut centers. We can’t work on Haryana’s model to save jabs,” the Delhi Health Minister said.

Delhi’s deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia tweeted, “Vaccines have run out in Delhi again. The central government gives vaccines for a day or two, and then we have to keep the vaccine centers closed for several days”.

“Why is our country's vaccine programme faltering even after so many days?” Sisodia added.

Delhi had only 19,000 doses of Covishield and 2, 39,000 doses of Covaxin on July 12, 2021.

As per the estimates of UN World Population Prospects, Delhi’s population in 2021 is 30.5 million (3.5 crores).

On July 10, 2021, Delhi managed to administer less than 80,000 COVID vaccine doses as the vaccine stock depleted further. And a total of 36,238 vaccine doses were administered on July 12, 2021, taking the total number of jabs given so far in the national capital to 89,37,904. government vaccination centers in Delhi remain shut on July 11, 2021.

Delhi managed to administer more than 1.6 lakh Covid vaccine doses on July 9, 2021. The vaccination drive is running at 1,374 centers with a capacity of administering 2,26,552 vaccine doses daily.

Meanwhile, the Indian Health Ministry informed on July 13, 2021, that more than 1.91 Crore (1, 91, 55,630) balance and unused COVID Vaccine doses are still available with the States/UTs and private hospitals to be administered.

The Ministry added, “The vaccination drive has been ramped up through the availability of more vaccines, advanced visibility of vaccine availability to States and UTs for enabling better planning by them and streamlining the vaccine supply chain”.