The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Wednesday, 13 January, tweeted that there has been no discrimination against any State in allocation of coronavirus vaccine doses.
“Full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines have been allocated to all States and Union Territories in proportion of Healthcare Workers database,” the MoHFW said.
“... Therefore, there is no question of discrimination against any State in allocation of vaccine doses.”
The tweets by MoHFW came in response to a Loksatta Live report quoting Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope as saying that the state had received fewer doses of COVID vaccines.
WHAT ELSE DID THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH SAY?
Further, in its tweets, the MoHFW stated that the supply of vaccine doses will be “continuously replenished in the weeks to come.”
“Therefore, any apprehension being expressed on account of deficient supply is totally baseless and unfounded,” it added.
MoHFW also had some advice for the states. The ministry said:
“States have been advised to organise vaccination sessions taking into account 10 percent reserve/wastage doses and average of 100 vaccinations/session/day. Therefore, any undue haste on the parts of States to organise unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day is not advised.”
Further, the MoHFW also said: “The States and UTs have also been advised to increase the number of vaccination session sites that would be operational every day in a progressive manner as the vaccination process stabilises and moves forward.”
BACKGROUND
According to Mumbai Mirror, Maharashtra Health Minister Tope had stated that the state had only received 9,63,000 Covishield doses of the expected 17,50,000 from Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII).
The first consignment of COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covishield’ was dispatched from Pune’s Serum Institute of India (SII) in the early hours of Tuesday, 12 January. Mumbai received its first batch on Wednesday.
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