Maharashtra continues to be the worst-affected state with the coronavirus with the highest number of cases, yet vaccines are now out of stock, and 26 vaccine centers in Mumbai have been shut. Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope told NDTV on Wednesday, “Stocks of vaccine in the state remain only for three days.”
Vaccination was halted in different areas of Maharashtra last evening. “Satara, Sangli, Panvel have stopped vaccinations,” said the State Health Minister Rajesh Tope said. Pune also shut over 100 vaccination centers because of vaccine shortage, Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule had tweeted.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar had also spoken to Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan on the same. The Maharashtra government is waiting for more vaccine doses from the Center and informed the Union Health Ministry of the dame. Twenty-three centers are located in Navi Mumbai.
When media asked why the Center was stalling on the vaccine doses to Maharashtra, Mr. Tope replied that the heavily populated state needs 40 lakh doses a week and 1.6 crore vaccines a month. “Maharashtra has double the population of Gujarat. Gujarat has got one crore doses and we have got one crore doses,” he said.
The health minister stated that this would be one of the four topics they would flag during today’s meeting over COVID-19 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The other three would be Remdesivir supply and price control, supply of oxygen from nearby states, and ventilator operational support.
“I have just been informed that the Center increased COVID-19 vaccine doses from 7 lakh to 17 lakh. Even this is less because we need 40 lakh vaccine doses a week and 17 lakh doses are not enough,” Mr Tope was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The shortage of vaccines in Maharashtra with the Center seeming to hold back has led to a war of words. Union Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan had accused Maharastra of diverting attention of its “mismanagement” of the pandemic to make false claims.
Dr. Harsh Vardhan had said.”The inability of the Maharashtra government to act responsibly is beyond comprehension… The lackadaisical attitude of the state government has singularly bogged down the entire country’s efforts to fight the virus,
Mr Tope said today, “This is not an issue that Centre and state should fight on. We don’t want to politicize this. We don’t want to blame anyone”
He said, “We need forty lakh vaccines a week. We won’t increase vaccination capacity beyond this. But this capacity we already have.” He also said, “We want the Centre to allow immunization of all above 18. The US has already started this”.
State minister Aaditya Thackeray, “The request still remains a need-based one, a scientific one.”
Maharashtra is one of the most populous state in India had 126 million people, and if as alleged Gujarat which holds a 64.8 million population is getting the same amount of vaccines, then Maharashtra would definitely need far more vaccines to fight the pandemic. Apparently, they have run out of vaccines presently! Will the Center listen to their pleas?
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Vaccines run out in Maharashtra Vaccines run out in Maharashtra