Not all COVID vaccines produced in India are immediately available for distribution, Lav Agarwal said on Monday. Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry of India, Agarwal was responding to a question about the gap between vaccine production and availability in India.
Addressing the gap in production and supply, Agarwal said, “We need to understand this in two ways. The first is about the production and then the availability of vaccines in the field. If 6.5 crore [doses] of Covishield vaccines are being produced and an average of 1.5 crore [doses] of Covaxin are being produced this month, if the product is 8 crore vaccines [doses] in total, it is not immediately available.”
“There are processes involved in ensuring its availability. Just after production, stability and sterility studies are done, that takes about one week. Then the vaccine is released in batches. These batches are then sent to the Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) based in Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh for batch testing. After completion of these tests, they are sent across the supply chain of India,” said Lav Agarwal.
The minister went on to say that it takes at least 8-10 days for the vaccines to reach their destination. The onus is on states to ensure better availability of vaccines to the last mile centre.
“States have to ensure that the logistics management and inventory management should be strong. For example, when we are giving free vaccines to states from the central government, we also inform states on a daily basis on doses allocated for each state day-on-day,” Lav Agarwal said.
He added, “This is done so that states can micro-plan availability, vaccine centres, slots, etc. Hence, throughout the vaccination supply chain, some are in the pipeline and some will be made available in weeks to come. But states must also ensure their availability on the field through their logistics and supply chain.”
With states struggling to get doses of COVID vaccines under the GoI’s revised procurement policy, companies are making efforts to ramp up production. Prompted by an inadequate supply of doses, many states have shut down a number of vaccination centres.
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