'Hand to mouth': Maharashtra needs 3 crore Covid vaccines per month, says Tope

Maharashtra is working below capacity and needs at least three crore vaccine doses per month to inoculate the entire population at the earliest, state health minister Rajesh Tope has said.

"We are working below our capacity. It is literally hand-to-mouth (situation)," Tope was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. He was speaking about the paucity of doses in Maharashtra.

The health minister informed that the state has the capacity to vaccinate 15 lakh people daily, but as of now, only two to three lakh people are being inoculated in a day due to a "shortage of vaccine doses".

"Three days ago, we got seven lakh vaccine doses. The stock will be exhausted by the end of the day (July 12). We have got more than 3.60 crore vaccine doses so far and this includes about 25 lakh doses purchased directly by the state government," the minister said.

A total of 3,65,25,990 vaccine doses were administered in the state as of Sunday, as per official data.

He said if the vaccine doses are supplied properly, the target of vaccinating the entire eligible population can be achieved at the earliest.

Dip in average vaccination

This comes in the backdrop of a decline in average daily inoculation against the coronavirus since 21 June, when the Centre implemented its revised universal vaccination programme.

According to the data available on the CoWIN platform, an average of 61.14 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine were administered daily in the week from 21 to 27 June, which dropped to 41.92 lakh doses daily in the subsequent week of 28 June to 4 July.

In the week from 5 to 11 July, the number of daily average vaccine doses administered further dipped to 34.32 lakh.

The decline in vaccination coincides with a rise in fresh Covid-19 infections in some states such as Assam and Tripura.

Some states like Rajasthan, West Bengal and even Maharashtra, which recorded the highest number of Covid-19 cases on Monday, raised the need for more vaccine doses.

Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said the state needed a minimum of three crore vaccine doses per month to inoculate the entire eligible population against the coronavirus at the earliest.

Covid situation in Maharashtra

The state reported 7,603 new coronavirus case and 53 fresh fatalities on Monday, taking the tally of infections to 61,65,402 and the death toll to 1,26,024, a health department official said.

The official said as many as 15,277 patients were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours, taking the number of recovered cases to 59,27,756. Maharashtra now has 1,08,343 active Covid-19 cases.

The state's Covid-19 recovery rate is 96.15%, while the fatality rate is 2.04%.