The pace of Covid vaccinations is expected to pick up from Saturday with the Jharkhand health department receiving one lakh doses of Covaxin on Friday with officials confirming that stocks had been dispatched to all 24 districts.

As per a communiqué from the health department on Friday evening, Ranchi and Dhanbad were allotted maximum doses, to the tune of 8,600 and 8,300 respectively, followed by Giridih (7,700), Bokaro and East Singhbhum (6,400 each) and Palamau (5,900).

Jharkhand has so far received 76,54,340 doses vaccines, comprising 13,80,480 doses of Covaxin and 62,73,860 doses of Covishield. As many as 75,52,790 doses have been administered. The remaining 27,240 doses _ 0.36 per cent of the total doses receied _ were wasted, according to the vaccine stock report released by the health department.

Currently, 1,28,790 doses are available for the administration, including 1,12,690 doses of Covaxin. The remaining doses are of Covishield. “Taking today’s (Friday) arrival of stocks into account, the state now has vaccines for the next two days. Another 2.5 lakh doses of Covishield is expected on or by July 15,” said an official of the health department.

Since the last three days, the vaccination drive in Jharkhand has suffered owing to depleting stocks. While Friday’s usage figures were yet to be released by the health department at the time of filing this report, sources mainatined that only a few centres were able to administer vaccines. “Districts which had stocks available with them held the vaccination drive while those which ran out of stocks suspended the inoculation centres,” said the official.

On Thursday, Jharkhand could only vaccinate about 20,000 residents. As per provisional data released by the NHM, as many as 14,541 residents received the first dose of the vaccine on Thursday, while the second jab was administered to 6,314 beneficiaries.

The state has on average vaccinated over one lakh residents daily since fresh supplies arrived on July 2, but the figure dropped to around 60,000 on Wednesday. More than half of those who received vaccines against Covid-19 on Thursday were below the age of 45 years, government data highlighted.