World’s vaccine power-house is running out of stocks

MUMBAI, (AFP) 9 April, 2021 -  Leading hospitals in India’s most coronavirus-hit state halted vaccinations Friday, citing shortages as infections across the country crossed 13 million and set a new daily record.   

The nation of 1.3 billion is confronting a ferocious second wave that has triggered its fastest infection rate since the pandemic began, with nearly 132,000 cases recorded in the past 24 hours.   

In financial and film hub Mumbai, 25 out of 71 private hospitals administering jabs ran out of supplies Thursday, city authorities said.   

The situation at government-run inoculation centres was not much better, with a giant 1,000-bed field hospital turning away people arriving for their first dose on Friday morning.   

 “There is a shortage of vaccines so the programme has been halted,” Heeba Patwe, a doctor at a facility normally inoculating 5,000 people daily, told AFP.   

Health workers at the huge Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital were only able to vaccinate some 180 people before stocks finished, a doctor at the facility told AFP.   

Similar shortages were in evidence across Mumbai, according to Mangala Gomare, who oversees the city’s vaccination programme.   

 “Most hospitals in Mumbai will exhaust their supplies by the end of the day,” Gomare told AFP Friday. 

 
 “Some might still have stock for one more day but that’s it.” City authorities tweeted that the shortage was “due to non-receipt of stocks” from the national government.