Vaccine stock dries up in Kashmir
SRINAGAR: Two weeks after J&K’S Lt Governor Manoj Sinha announced that 1.2 crore doses of vaccine have been ordered, the vaccination centres in the Valley are running dry as government has failed to arrange vaccines.
The numbers provided by the J&K government also reflect that very few doses are being administered in the UT since last one week.
Even the people, who are due for the second jab, complain that they are unable to find vaccination centres where they can go for inoculation.
On Saturday, just 607 people received vaccines in 10 districts of Kashmir, while in seven districts, including Srinagar, not a single person got vaccinated. In Jammu’s 10 districts, 15,268 people were vaccinated, data shows.
Similarly on May 14, 208 were jabbed in 10 Kashmir districts, while in Srinagar and five other districts, not a single person got the shot. In Jammu, 15,790 had received jabs.
A day earlier, on Thursday, not a single vaccine was administered in 10 districts of Kashmir, while in as many districts of Jammu, 4,893 were inoculated.
So far, as per the official figures, 28,04,543 people have received the shots in the entire J&K and most of these were administered a month ago when everyday, around 50,000 people used to get vaccines.
However, due to the nonavailability of vaccines, most of the vaccination centres are closed or the officials ask people to wait till the vaccines are available.
“It’s an irony that now, stock of vaccines has dried up. Most of the centres are shut and government is asking people to get vaccinated. They don’t tell us where to send the people,” said a senior doctor at Government Medical College in Srinagar.
On April 29, L-G Sinha, while chairing a meeting with officebearers and volunteers of Indian Red Cross Society, had said that people of J&K need not panic as the government is equipped to deal with the emerging situation and 1.2 crore doses have been ordered for vaccination of 18-45 age group.
Meanwhile, People’s Conference led by Sajjad Lone on Sunday said that government of Jammu and Kashmir should float global tenders to end vaccine paucity in the UT and termed the scarcity of doses in the Valley “extremely worrying”.
Former legislator and party’s general secretary Imran Reza Ansari in a statement issued here highlighted how health centres across the Valley were battling the shortage of vaccines and that many sites, as per the reports, have been closed due to the unavailability of vaccines.
“There is a wave of mounting anger and frustration due to tardy vaccination roll-out in J&K with some high-risk groups crying out for protection. The vaccine is the only bulwark available against the current calamity and denying the public such a facility amid the present peak is deplorable and inexplicable,” Ansari said.
He said if reports were to be believed, there were mere 208 jabs administered to the people in Kashmir in the last 24 hours while in Jammu, the number is 20,000 in the last 48 hours.
“We care for the people of all regions as much as we care for ourselves, but prioritising one region and ignoring the other amid the deadly pandemic is regrettable. We demand an absolute uniformity in the supply of the vaccines in Jammu and Kashmir. Precious human lives are getting consumed and the shortage of vaccines is only making things worse,” he added.