Thousands of people returned without getting vaccinated from most of the inoculation centres across the country on the last day of the six-day-long mass Covid inoculation drive on Thursday amid chaos due to shortage of vaccines and mismanagement, according to vaccine seekers and government officials.
Most of the vaccination centres in many districts stopped administering the second dose citing shortage of the relevant vaccines on the day in a move that went contrary to the announcement of the Directorate General of Health Services, while several thousand vaccination centres did not administer the first dose in last three days citing the same reason.
In many vaccination centres, including Maternal and Child Health Training Institute at Azimpur, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University convention centre and Sarkari Karmachari Hospital- Fulbaria in the capital, security staff and volunteers and vaccine seekers were engaged in brawl on Thursday as the centre authorities abruptly suspended the administration of both doses in hours of opening the centre keeping hundreds of people waiting in the queue.
Top DGHS officials on Wednesday announced that the centres would continue to administer the second dose as there was an adequate stock for the purpose.
‘There was a miscommunication on continuation of the second dose,’ DGHS director general Prof. Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam said about the mismanagement of the inoculation campaign.
Many centres took decisions in consideration of the situation and the stock of vaccine available on the ground, he said.
The authorities would resume vaccination next week as there were fresh supplies of vaccines in past three days, he added.
Khalilur Rahman, 55, a registrant with the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University convention centre said that he went to receive the second dose but did not have it as the authorities abruptly suspended inoculation without any prior notice keeping several hundred people waiting in the queue.
Volunteers and staff at various centres engaged in scuffles with many vaccine seekers who protested against the abrupt suspension of inoculation, he said.
A notice was pasted at Maternal and Child Health Training Institute at Azimpur on the day announcing suspension of Covid inoculation citing that vaccines were out of stock.
Vaccines would be administered later to those who had already got text messages with dates in their vaccine card, it said.
Meher Nigar Jerin said that her father went to the RAB Headquarters vaccination centre at Uttara, Dhaka, for receiving the second dose after getting a text message from the centre.
But he had to return without receiving the jab after waiting over an hour in the queue as the centre officials claimed that vaccine doses were out of stock, she said.
Volunteers said that the centre would send text messages when the vaccine would be available, she added.
Chattogram General Hospital authorities on Thursday suspended administering Moderna and Sinopharm vaccines at the centre for an indefinite period as the vaccines went out of stock.
‘We have stopped administering both the first and the second doses of the Moderna and Sinopharm vaccines as the vaccines have exhausted at the Chattogram General Hospital,’ Chattogram civil surgeon Sheikh Fazle Rabbi told New Age.
The centre, however, continued administering the second dose of the Astrazeneca vaccine, he said.
The civil surgeon hoped to resume administration of Moderna and Sinopharm vaccines at the centre in a week.
Hanif Al Minhaj, an expatriate worker, said that he went to Subarnachar upazila health complex of Noakhali district to receive the second dose of the Sinopharm vaccine according to the date mentioned in the vaccine card.
‘But I could not receive the dose as the authorities claimed that the vaccine was out of stock,’ he said.
The authorities could not say when they would resume vaccination, he said.
Ahnan Ahmed in Nagarkanda upazila of Faridpur said that several hundred people went back from the upazila health complex vaccination centres unvaccinated in the past 2-3 days.
M R Zaman in Jashore said that his wife had completed registration on July 19 for vaccination from the 250-bed General Hospital but did not get the text message for the first dose till August 12.
But many people who have completed their registration in August got the text message for the first dose by maintaining ‘contact’ with centre officials, he alleged, adding that a vaccine seeker even got text message within a day.
Over 1.44 crore people, out of about three crore registrants, were waiting for the message for the first dose till August 10, according to DGHS records.
About 55 lakh vaccine doses were administered in the drive starting from August 7 across the country, according to DGHS officials.
Over two crore doses have been administered in the inoculation campaign launched acorss the country on February 7, according to DGHS documents.
