Jharkhand received 2.57 lakh doses of Covishield from the Centre on Monday afternoon to tide over an acute crisis of vaccines and prevent the immunisation drive against Covid-19 from coming to a standstill, health officials said.

However, the vaccines provided on Monday may only last for a week or even less, and the state may have to deal with a shortage again in the last week of July, officials spearheading the vaccination drive in Jharkhand said.

The Centre was yet to release the schedule for vaccine supplies in the second half of the month, making it difficult to predict how many vaccines Jharkhand may receive after July 15 if the entire stock of about 3 lakh vaccines is saturated, officials added.

“We received 6 lakh Covishield doses on July 2 and today’s (Monday's) supply of 2.5 lakh doses takes the total count of Covishield doses supplied to the state to 8.5 lakh this month,” said Naman Priyesh Lakra, special officer on duty for Covid-19 vaccination in Jharkhand, adding that the state has received about 1 lakh doses of Covaxin and was expecting more.

The 2,57,790 Covishield doses delivered on Monday were distributed among all the 24 districts as per the demand, and Ranchi got the highest share of 22,200 doses, a report shared by the National Health Mission (NHM) highlighted. As many as 21,190 doses were sent to Dhanbad, 16,500 to East Singhbhum and 16,400 to Bokaro. At least 15,200 doses were allotted to Palamau and 11,800 to West Singhbhum.

The immunisation drive in Jharkhand lost momentum due to shortage of vaccines in the past couple of days. The state vaccinated more than 1 lakh residents daily from July 2 to July 7, but had to slow down the campaign from July 8. On Sunday, the state managed to administer Covid-19 vaccines to only about 18,000 beneficiaries, the least in a day this month.

An official actively involved in the vaccination drive in Jharkhand said that the available stock of vaccines may not last for more than five to six days even if the state administers fewer vaccines than its capacity. As per government data, there are 3,377 vaccination sites in Jharkhand and the state can vaccinate more than 3 lakh residents every day if the Centre ensures sufficient supplies on time, the official added.

Jharkhand has so far vaccinated over 76 lakh residents, about one-fourth of the state’s total population of 3.29 crore, as per the 2011 Census.