KOLKATA: With the arrival of 5.2 lakh Covishield and 2.7 lakh Covaxin doses arriving on Wednesday, the state now has more than 20 lakh doses in its kitty.
The stock is now sufficient to last around seven to 10 days.
Health officials are hopeful of scaling up the drive massively as Bengal is expected to get more vaccines.
“The supply of vaccines is back on the track.
We got about 5.2 lakh Covishield doses on Wednesday evening.
We are expecting the supply chain to be seamless and more intent from now onwards.
In such a case, we should be able to speed up our inoculation drive,” said state family welfare officer Ashim Das Malakar.
“The current stock that we have should see us through about seven days easily.
But given the kind of frequency in which vaccines have started arriving, we would be scaling up our drive to the maximum level,” said a health department official.
While the supply from the central government has increased, the state government is procuring doses directly from the manufacturers.
While the Covishield consignment that came on Wednesday was from the central quota, the Covaxin doses were purchased by the state directly from Bharat Biotech.
On Monday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had said the state had procured 18 lakh doses from the manufacturers in May and the government had plans to buy at least 22 lakhs doses in June.
The state had administered close to 5 lakh doses on a number of days in March and April.
But the drive had to be scaled down due to scanty supply.
From the first week of May, the government started buying doses on its own, adding to state’s vaccine kitty.
Vaccination had already started picking up pace over the past one week with many private centres getting their own supply.
Currently, between 2 lakh to 2.5 lakh people are getting vaccinated a day.
“With the kind of robust vaccination infrastructure we have in the state, we have the capacity to administer 5 lakh doses a day,” said a health department official.
While the supply from the central government is being used in vaccinating people above 45 years, the state’s own purchase is being used mostly to vaccinate people between 18 and 44 years.