Jamui district, with a population of around 20 lakh, received 260 vaccine vials on Saturday.
Begusarai district, where over 30 lakh people reside, got 200 vials on Friday and none on Saturday.
Bihar’s vaccination drive has slowed down to a trickle because of lack of supplies, but the Nitish Kumar government that has the BJP as its dominant partner has been silent, showing nothing of the urgency the other states have been displaying while demanding increased supplies from the Centre.
The majority of the 38 districts of Bihar have been getting a meagre supply of vaccines since early last week, with no consignment having arrived from the Centre in the past two days, sources in the state government said.
Officials said Bihar needed to have a stock of 25 lakh vaccine doses to run its vaccination drive. They could not say how many doses were currently available as the state does not maintain an inventory, but said the stocks were “negligible”.
Vaccination camps have had to be called off in many places across Bihar because of the shortage. With the number of shots administered dipping sharply, the state government discontinued its daily vaccination bulletins from Thursday.
“The supply of vaccines has been decreasing over the past few days. The last batch contained just 200 vials and we could inoculate people at just a couple of places in the district. Before that, we had received 700 vials,” Begusarai civil surgeon Vinay Kumar Jha told this newspaper.
Several civil surgeons fear that calling off vaccination camps or schedules would hobble the drive to inoculate all eligible people by this year-end.
“There was much hesitation among people over taking Covid vaccines in the initial phases, but the momentum had picked up after we took several measures, including publicity campaigns. However, the lack of supply is impeding the flow of the drive,” Khagaria civil surgeon Ajay Kumar Singh said.
Nitish had on June 21 announced a campaign to vaccinate six crore people in the state in six months.
Bihar is languishing towards the bottom of the vaccination chart in terms of coverage. It has been able to administer at least one shot to just over 1.5 crore people, or around 12.5 per cent of its 12 crore population. Close to 20 per cent of India’s population has received at least one dose of Covid vaccine.
Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey told The Telegraph that the supplies would “improve from tomorrow (Monday)”.
“Only 10 crore vaccines were produced in June. It will go up to 17 crore in July. Naturally its availability will improve,” he said.
Health department special secretary Manoj Kumar acknowledged that Bihar was facing a situation of “irregular supply of vaccines, which has created a scarcity. We are not getting them, which is why we are facing the problem.”
“The Centre does not hold consultations with the states about their requirement of vaccine doses. It allots them on its own. We don’t know about its criteria. However, we have been told that the supplies will become all right from June 29,” Manoj Kumar told this newspaper.
