At current rate, Karnataka can finish vaccinating adults against Covid-19 only in January

Only 33 per cent of people aged 45 and above have received the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine so far in the state and the late start to vaccinations for those aged 18 to 44 means that only 3 per cent have received the second dose to date.

With over 4.2 crore adults in Karnataka yet to be fully vaccinated, and with the state administering an average of about three lakh doses daily in the last 14 days, it would take Karnataka roughly about 141 days to wrap up its adult vaccination drive, data shows.

Officials said the ongoing limited supplies of vaccines are upsetting previously conceived timetables for vaccinations. Even in Bengaluru Urban, which has the highest vaccination coverage in the state, some assembly constituencies have severely underperformed even when it comes to administering the first dose.

Pulikeshi Nagar constituency in North Bengaluru is at the bottom of the charts.

As of August 10, only a scant 23.09 per cent of its 3,21,720 target population of adults has received at least one dose.

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R Akhanda Srinivasamurthy, MLA of the constituency, said that this is because of a severe shortfall of vaccination supplies.

“The constituency has a high population density and we have a lot of slums here, but there is no vaccine hesitancy as such. We are just not getting the required amount of doses. For 15 days, we received no doses and of late, we are getting about 1,000 doses per day, which is not enough. Some constituencies are getting more doses than others,” he said.

In contrast, equally dense Shivajinagar has attained a first dose coverage of 99.8 per cent, data from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) shows. MLA Rizwan Arshad said this was achieved through a grassroots campaign to deploy vaccines and curtail hesitancy deep within neighborhoods. The constituency also tapped into the private sector and CSR to bridge the deficit of vaccine supplies from the government.

“Government supplies amount to only about 1,000 to 2,000 doses per day. The private sector was invaluable in providing us with a lot of doses. At the same time, our 2nd dose coverage is currently about 24 per cent, and the picture is not as good as before because supplies of doses are harder to procure now,” Arshad explained.

Only about half of the city’s +45 age group has been fully vaccinated so far, partly due to limited stocks of doses and partly because of initial delays in the vaccination programme.

In BBMP limits, out of a target population of 21,90,307 people aged 45 and above, 12,89,113 were due to get the second dose as of Sunday - out of which 11,48,217 people (or 89%) had actually been administered their second doses.