In yet another SOS to the Centre, Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia said today that Bharat Biotech has declined to supply any more vaccines to the national capital. He said Delhi's reserve stock of Covid-19 vaccine is exhausted, and that the Centre should carry out its responsibility and stop all exports to fulfil the domestic demand.
He said Delhi had demanded 1.34 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines, 67 lakhs each of Covaxin and Covishield. "Covaxin (Bharat Biotech) wrote to us yesterday that they can't provide. They wrote 'we're making dispatches as per directives of concerned govt officials'. Obvious that these are central govt officials," said the Delhi deputy chief minister.
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Sisodia said the company wrote it can't give any additional supplies of Covid-19 vaccines. "I don't know how much is being supplied to other states but they've written to us that they can't provide it to Delhi because they have to supply as per the central government," he said.
Given no supply of Covaxin from Bharat Biotech, the Delhi government had to close over 100 centres across 17 schools, which were administering the vaccine. "The centres administering Covishield vaccines are functioning," said Sisodia.
While slamming the Centre over the issue of shortage of vaccines, Sisodia said the central government should act as the government of a country. "They should carry out their responsibility and stop all exports," he added.
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Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain had on Monday also warned the national capital has Covaxin stock for only one day, while Covishield stock will last for up to four days only.
As the issue of vaccine shortage takes centre stage, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday suggested to the central government that it should share the COVID-19 vaccine formula of Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech with other firms in the country to scale up production of the coronavirus jab.
He said there is a shortage of COVID-19 vaccine doses across India and there's an urgent need to scale up its manufacturing on a war footing. Kejriwal said vaccine production should be ramped up while developing a national policy for administering the jab to everyone in the next few months.
"Not just 2, several companies should be deployed to produce vaccines. The Centre should collect the formula to produce vaccines from these 2 companies & give it to all those companies that can produce vaccines safely. Centre has the power to do this in these difficult times," the Chief Minister added.
Also read: Kejriwal urges Centre to share Serum, Bharat Biotech's vaccine formula with other companies