Maharashtra Complains of Vaccine Shortage
Maharashtra health minister, Rajesh Tope said that the state has only two days of stock of Covid-19 vaccines, after which it will officially run out of vaccine doses for the immunisation drive.
Maharashtra Health Minister, Rajesh Tope on Thursday 8th April said that the state has only two days of stock of Covid-19 vaccines, after which it will officially run out of vaccine doses. Twenty-six vaccination centres have been shut in Mumbai. 23 of these are in Navi Mumbai. He said, “Satara & Sangli have stopped vaccinations.” Pune also shut over 100 vaccination centres because of vaccine shortage. Tope said it is very important that Maharashtra has enough vaccines because maharashtra has the highest number of COVID cases. He said that even after telling the Central Government many times to give vaccines, still the Centre is not giving. Tope accused the centre of supplying less vaccines to maharashtra. Tope claimed that states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana etc have been given more vaccines but they have less COVID cases. He asked why the Central Government discriminated against maharashtra. But Maharashtra was given only 7.5 lakh doses in the latest allotment. The Central Government then increased it to 17 Lakh but Tope said that this is also not enough.
He said Maharashtra needs 40 lakh vaccine doses a week and 17 lakh doses are not enough.
Vaccines are very important to control the spread of COVID-19. Union Health Minister Harsh strongly responded to Tope by saying he is spreading wrong information and creating panic among people. Vardhan accused the state of making false claims to divert attention from its mismanagement of the outbreak. The Maharashtra government had even asked the centre to reduce the eligible age for vaccines. But Vardhan has said since the supply is limited, people will be vaccinated on a priority basis.
In response to Maharashtra’s demand for more vaccines Narendra Modi said:
We have limited vaccines. We can not send all vaccines to Maharashtra. It is not right to think in this way. We have to manage by thinking about the country. We have to distribute vaccines on a priority basis. That is the only way we can reduce cases all over India.”
