A total of 1,37,580 doses of Covaxin reached Kerala on Wednesday. This consignment was directly procured by Kerala from Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech and has now reached the state. The vaccine consignment reached Kochi and was handed over to the State Health Department by the Kerala Medical Corporation, Ernakulam.
As of Tuesday, 9.02 lakh people in Ernakulam district had received the vaccine. A total of 5.98 lakh persons and 3.03 lakh people received the vaccine dose from government and private hospitals respectively.
A total of 6.9 lakh people have received the first dose of the vaccine and 2.06 lakh people have received the second dose so far. Altogether, 1.32 lakh health workers, 79,769 COVID-19 frontline workers, 2.33 lakh people between the ages of 45 and 60 and 4.5 lakh people over the age of 60 have been vaccinated in Kerala.
A total of 1.96 lakh people received the first dose of Covishield and 9,851 people were also given two doses of Covaxin.
Across Kerala, a total of 62.10 lakh people have been vaccinated, which is 17.50% of Kerala’s population. A total of 19.01 lakh people have also received the second dose. The fresh batch of vaccines came at a time when the state had to slow down its vaccination drive due to shortage of vaccines in many districts.
Officials in Kerala also added that they did not receive the next batch of free vaccines from the Union government. As a result, the state is facing a shortage of vaccines for those above 45 years of age.
According to the data published by the Union government, Kerala has so far received 78.97 lakh doses of vaccine (both Covishield and Covaxin). According to the Kerala government’s COVID-19 dashboard, the state has administered 80.41 lakh shots to people as of May 11.
Many district authorities TNM spoke to stated that due to the apprehension over vaccine shortage, they are focusing on administering vaccines to those who are scheduled to receive their second doses.