Vaccination camps announced, but Karnataka still awaits Covid booster doses from Centre

According to the figures shared by the health department, presently the state has 320 doses of Covishield, 5,12,290 doses of Covaxin and zero doses of Corbevax.

While Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had directed the officials to organise vaccination camps to increase booster dose coverage, the health department has been unable to do so citing the lack of stocks for Covishield, demand for which is high.

“We have placed the order but we are yet to receive the vaccines. The demand for Covishield is huge and camps would only make sense if we get Covishield doses,” a health official said.

Since January 1, as many as 1,40,085 booster doses have been administered of which 1,27,255 were administered at government Covid vaccination centers and 12,830 at private vaccination centers.

In the period November-December 2022, the genome sequencing report stated that 745 variants of concerns (VoC) were detected of which 467 were Omicron and 278 were Kappa/ETA/Pango strains.

Presently, there are only five cases of hospitalization due to Covid in Karnataka and the positivity rate is at 0.36 per cent.