4.1% Covishield, 17.5% Covaxin jabs wasted
NEW DELHI: In its ongoing vaccination drive against Covid-19, Delhi has recorded a wastage rate of 4.1% for the Covishield vaccine and 17.5% for Covaxin, said a senior Delhi government official, citing a report prepared by the health department on Tuesday.
“For Covishield, Delhi’s wastage rate is 4.1%. That means, for every 1,000 doses administered to beneficiaries, 41 doses went waste. For Covaxin, the wastage rate is 17.5%. However, these rates are lower than the national average at this stage – it is 6.3% for Covishield and 25.8% for Covaxin,” the official said.
While Covishield is the Indian variation of the Oxford/astrazeneca vaccine, and is manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII), Covaxin was developed by Bharat Biotech, an Indian firm.
Delhi was supplied around 264,000 doses of Covishield and 20,000 doses of Covaxin in the first batch, with which the vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16. Currently, the vaccination drive is open to health workers and front-line workers and Delhi has so far vaccinated 131,935 beneficiaries, government records showed.
“The central government has set a permissible limit of 10% of dose wastage, irrespective of which vaccine. Earlier this month, the central government had asked states and Union territories to assess vaccine wastage,” said the official quoted above.
For higher wastage of Covaxin, government officials cited two reasons – higher number of doses per vial, creating difficulties in management as all doses have to be administered within four hours of a vial being opened; and relatively low turnout at centres administering Covaxin.
A second senior health department official, on condition of anonymity, said, “Across states, wastage rate is higher for Covaxin because each vial of this vaccine has 20 doses, unlike Covishield vials that have 10 doses each. Once a vial is opened, all doses have to be administered within four hours. So clearly, wastage management is difficult for the centres administering Covaxin.”