17 states and UTs witness sparse use of Covaxin

Six states and UTs did not use a single dose of Covaxin, made by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with NIV-Pune

Less than 100 doses of Covaxin – the homegrown Covid-19 vaccine – have been used in as many as 17 Indian states and UTs of which six provinces didn’t use a single dose of Covaxin, according to the official vaccine distribution data.

The use of Covaxin is fairly low in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu compared to the other three states. For instance, as of February 20, Karnataka used 5,40,890 doses of Covishield as against 5,873 doses of Covaxin. Similarly, Tamil Nadu used 2,50,984 doses of the former and only 4,416 doses of the latter.

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Among the half-a-dozen states and UTs, which did not use a single dose of Covaxin, Chhattisgarh is the only large state. Others on the list are Puducherry, Manipur, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

The remaining 11 states with low use of Bharat Biotech vaccine are Tripura (30 doses), Punjab (91), Chandigarh (9), Ladakh (31), Mizoram (4), Meghalaya (49), Arunachal Pradesh (46), Nagaland (4), Goa (1), Lakshadweep (4) and Uttarakhand (69). All the data are as of February 20 and available on the government’s CoWin dashboard. Two other provinces with low Covaxin use are Jammu and Kashmir (830) and Sikkim (128).

“The allocation of Covaxin to states must have been based on some rationale. I would presume that the rationale is guided by the ability to strictly monitor post-vaccination adverse events,” Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India told DH.

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“Wherever allotted, there should have been efficient mechanisms for ensuring that informed consent was ethically administered and also have a robust mechanism for post-vaccination adverse effects,” he added.

More than one lakh doses of Covaxin was used only in five states – Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. The Serum Institute-made Covishield remains the vaccine of choice for most of the states.

The homegrown vaccine was approved by the DCGI for commercial use without the efficacy data. In fact, T S Singh Deo, the Health Minister of Chhattisgarh, a state that did not use a single dose of the vaccine, wrote to the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan last month on the state’s reluctance to use Covaxin in the absence of efficacy data.

Developed in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology, Pune, the efficacy of Covaxin is being evaluated in 26,000 volunteers in India’s first and only phase-3 efficacy study for a Covid-19 vaccine, and the largest phase-3 trial ever conducted for any vaccine in India.