Maharashtra’s state health minister Rajesh Tope said that 26 vaccination centres are shut in Mumbai as the state is waiting for more vaccine supply from the Centre. Vaccination was stopped in a few parts of the state on Wednesday evening thus raising the alarm of the vaccine shortage again.

 According to a news channel report, Satara was among the one of the districts that halted giving vaccine shots. Vinay Gouda, the Chief Executive Officer of the Satara Zilla Parishad said that there was a shortage of vaccine doses. Pune also stopped over 100 vaccination centres due to vaccine shortage.

Rajesh Tope said that as per the latest release order of vaccines from Centre, Maharashtra was given 7.5 lakh vaccine doses only. Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana etc were given more vaccines than Maharashtra. He spoke to Dr Harshavardhan, even Sharad Pawar had a talk with him. He raised the issue of discrimination stating that they have the greatest number of active patients, positivity rate and death with a population of 12 crore. 

Dr. Harshvardhan has assured that the rectifications will be done immediately. As per Tope, Maharashtra needs 1.6 crore vaccine doses every month and 40 lakh every week as they are vaccinating 6 lakh people daily.

He further said that Gujarat is half the population of Maharashtra and has received 1 crore vaccines till now, and Maharashtra got only 1.04 lakhs vaccine doses. They are going to raise these issues such as remdesivir supply and its price control, oxygen supply from nearby states, vaccine doses along with ventilator support before the Prime Minister in todays meeting over COVID-19.

Source: National Herald