Jharkhand will have to stop immunising those between 18-44 years in two-three days as vaccine stocks are running out, chief minister Hemant Soren suggested on Monday.

Speaking at an online meeting with cabinet ministers on the Covid-19 situation, Hemant said the vaccination campaign was being hampered because of erratic supplies. “Only because of the Union government, we are now struggling to vaccinate our people," he said.

"In the 18-plus category, for which the state government is bearing costs, we only have doses available for a maximum two to three days. Similarly, in the 45-plus age group, for which doses are coming from the Centre, we have vaccines left only for 7-10 days. If we don’t get stocks, it will be difficult to sustain the vaccination drive amid the raging pandemic,” he said.

As state per health department data, of the 1.57 crore people in the 18-plus category, 3.70 lakh had been administered vaccines so far. Similarly, among the target of 83.86 lakh in the 45-plus age group, 32.53 lakh had got the first dose and 3.50 lakh the second.

The state government had placed orders of 50 lakh vials each of Covishield and Covaxin with the mafucaturers earlier this month. But only a part of that order had reached the state, said the chief minister. "We require about four crore vials to vaccinate our population but we have got only 40 lakh till date. We are now exploring options to directly import from other countries,” he said.

Rural Covid task force

At another programme, Hemant announced the formation of a dedicated task force to help manange the Covid-19 outbreak in rural areas. Under the programme, titled "Gramin Surakshan evm Survekshan (Village Safety and Survey)", two separate teams will be set up at panchayat levels. One team will undertake door-to-door health surveys to identify suspected Covid cases, while the other will conduct rapid tests on them. The teams will start working in over 4,000 panchayats from Tuesday.

“Our entire focus has now shifted to rural areas. In the last one month, we have trained grassroots f frontline workers like sahiyas, ANMs, anganwadi workers, mukhiyas, etc, who will be part of these teams,” Hemant said, adding that panchayat- level Covid care centres were also being set up, in addition to making ambulances available.

Another week of lockdown

The state government is likely to extend the current lockdown by another week with most cabinet ministers favouring such a decision. Hemant said a formal announcement would be made after evaluating all ground realities, but added that the lockdown had helped to curb the spread of Covid-19.

“Cases have drastically fallen compared to April 22 when we first announced the health safety week and went on to extend thrice. But the mortality rate is still at 2.5% which is a concern. Going by figures, we are higher than states like UP in terms of deaths, but we know that unlike data manipulation by others, we are not doing so. In terms of the recovery rate, we are among the best states in the country,” he said.