Hingoli gets fewest doses; district’s vax coverage below state average

MUMBAI: Hingoli in Marathawada region stands at the bottom of Maharashtra’s vaccination supply with merely 0.79% of the 47 million vaccine doses given to the district. The low supply of doses reflects in the district’s low vaccination coverage in the vulnerable 45 plus population- its coverage is around 32.73%, much lower than the state’s average of 51.26%. The district’s vaccination coverage in the 18-44 age category is 17.23% while the state’s average is 29.8%.

According to the state estimates, Hingoli’s adult population is around 10.28 lakh. As of Tuesday, the district had received only 3.74 lakh doses. With limited supply, the district has managed to fully vaccinate only 54978 people in the 45 plus population and 9684 people in the 18-44 category.

“The vaccination coverage is definitely at the lower end, but we have been receiving limited supply since the very beginning,” said Dr Shivaji Pawar, the district health officer of Hingoli. “We have been requesting the state authorities to increase our allotment for the past several months. Our supply had ranged between 3,000 to 4,000 doses every four days. Only on two days over the past week, we have received 32,000 and 30,000 doses at once,” he said.

According to Dr Pawar, the highest daily vaccination in Hingoli has been 13,000 doses. “We have a capacity of nearly 15,000 doses per day in the 113 vaccination centres. We need a weekly quota of at least 60,000 doses,” he said. The district has recorded over 18,400 Covid-19 cases and over 500 deaths to date. Over the past fortnight, Hingoli has been recording new cases in single digit including zero cases on a few days. “Since the number of cases is so low, we can use this time to increase the pace of vaccination and protect those who have not been infected,” said Pawar adding that he is hopeful that the vaccine supply to the district will increase in the coming days.

A state health official said districts have been allotted vaccine doses in proportion to the population. “Occasionally, some districts have been allotted higher doses when they were seeing a surge in cases,” the official said. But health activists said that vaccine disparity is a major issue not just across states in India but also within the districts in the states. “The vaccine distribution is not always guided by epidemiological reasoning,” said Dr Abhijit More of Jan Arogya Abhiyan. “Often, socio-political factors play a major role,” he said.

According to More, while big cities like Mumbai are rightly allotted a higher number of doses because of the population as well as the spread of the infection, the state must thrive to have a fair distribution model across districts. “Nearly 20% to 30% of the vaccine doses are being supplied through the private sector. The state must also work out distribution strategies and CSR models to route some vaccines to the districts with low coverage,” said Dr More.