Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, on May 28 Friday, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to take measures to ensure that the government gets a continuous supply of vaccines ‘so that the balance of vaccines can be supplied matching with the pace of Kerala's vaccination potential.’ The Chief Minister said that the state had placed a purchase order for 1 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccine for the month of May, but the state has received only 8.84 lakh vaccine doses.
“As you are aware, we were doing 2.5 lakh vaccinations per day when the vaccine supply was regular. Now due to the limited supply, we are not able to fully utilise the potential of our system. The pace of coverage has drastically come down. People are also apprehensive of the slow pace of vaccination drives,” Pinarayi wrote in his letter. “I would request you to kindly take measures for continuous supply of vaccines, so that the balance of vaccines can be supplied matching with the pace of Kerala's vaccination potential,” Pinarayi said.
The Kerala Chief Minister said in his letter that the state government has a total target of covering 1.13 crore population above 45 years but Kerala has been able to cover only 49% of this group with at least one dose. The Kerala Chief Minister said that the state has received 85,47,930 doses of COVID-19 vaccine (after reducing the doses given to AFMS and Mahe) and is expected to receive another 5.28 lakh doses as per the fortnight schedule shared by the Ministry. “One half the population of persons, above the age of 45, are yet to be covered with at least one dose. Only 22% of those who received the first dose have received the second dose so far,” the Kerala CM said in his letter.
The CM added that in the case of the 18-44 years group, the state has a total of 1.5 crore eligible beneficiaries. “Based on this target and our action plan, we had placed a purchase order for 1 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccine for the month of May 2021, but we have received only 8.84 lakh. Because of this limited supply, we have been forced not to open vaccination for all. Instead, we have made priority groups and are now giving vaccines to those with comorbidities and certain frontline categories only. So far, 57,666 doses have been administered in this category,” Pinarayi has told the Prime Minister.
As per the statistics available with Kerala Health Department’s bulletin issued on May 26, the state had a vaccine stock of only 47,750 doses of Covaxin and 1.62 lakh doses of Covishield, which were supplied by the Union government to vaccinate the population above 45 years, health care workers and frontline workers. In his address during the first session of the 15th Kerala Assembly, Governor Arif Mohammad Khan said that COVID-19 shall be treated as a Public Good and that the access to which shall be unrivalled and non-excludable. “Due to the policy of differential pricing of vaccines, the additional cost to the state exchequer will be at least Rs 1,000 crore,” the Governor said.