Vaccine stock in Nagaland: Why there is mismatch between centre’s claim and actual availability   

Only 60,000 doses, says State official on April 24; Around 1.53 lakh available, informs Centre’s data on April 26

Morung Express News
Dimapur | April 26

There are only 60,000 doses in stock at present in Nagaland, a top official of the Directorate of Health & Family Welfare (DHFW), Nagaland told the media on April 24. 

As a result, the administration of 1st dose has been temporarily halted, he said. However, 3 lakh doses of the vaccine placed by the State Government from the Union Health Ministry is expected next week, informed Principal Director DHFW, Dr Kevichusa Medikhru.

On the same day, however, update on availability of total doses across the country by MyGov platfom based on Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare’s data, gave a completely different picture. 

According to the MyGov update, out of 1.85 crore doses across India, a total of 1.54 lakh were available in the Nagaland on April 24, a far cry from 60,000 cited by the State official.

On April 25, the figure for the Nagaland stood at 1.53 lakh.

The figure on April 26 at 8 am was same as the previous day, indicating that there was no vaccination on Sunday. 

It was informed that the 3 lakh doses, reportedly ordered 3 weeks back, were yet to reach the State on Monday. 

Why the huge mismatch then?

The stock data as shown MyGov platform is “nowhere near the actual rate,” a state health official told The Morung Express on Monday when queried on the discrepancy. 

The official attributed the same to the problem the Co-WIN portal, the dedicated platform for vaccine related matters.  
As a result, there is considerable time-lag in the reconciling offline sessions on the portal resulting in lower figure on vaccine administration, while showing higher stock of vaccines. 

This difference seems to be huge. For instance, according the MoHFW data based on C0-WIN portal, a total of 1, 72,647 doses have been administrated in Nagaland as of 8 AM on April 26.

However, as per the weekly bulletin issued by the State’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), vaccination status as on April 23 was already of 1,79,349 doses. The data is exclusive of April 24-26. 

While the MoHFW noted on its update that offline sessions in some states, including Nagaland are yet “to reconcile on CoWIN,” on its daily update, underestimation of dosages or overestimation of availability of stocks may lead to shortages to meet urgent requirements, and rectified promptly.