T’gana: Vaccine stock left for 3 days max; CS writes to health ministry

Hyderabad: In a letter to the Union health ministry, Chief secretary of Telangana expressed concerns over shortage of vaccines and wrote that the state has only 5.66 lakh doses left which would “last for three days at maximum.”

In a letter sent to Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Saturday, Telangana chief secretary Somesh Kumar asked for 30 lakh doses of vaccines for the next 15 days.

The letter said that the number of vaccinations crossed 1.15 lakh per day on Friday and the state wants to increase this capacity to 2 lakh per day.

“Therefore, I would like to request you to urgently provide at least 30 lakh doses of vaccine to Telangana for the next 15 days,” Mr Kumar wrote in the letter.

Apart from Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and Jharkhand had also warned the centre of fast-depleting coronavirus vaccine stocks, even as a deadly second wave of infections over 1.45 lakh were reported on Saturday in India — threatens to overrun the country and its already-creaking medical infrastructure.

Telangana reported nearly 3,000 coronavirus cases on Saturday, the highest single-day spike this year, pushing the tally to over 3.24 lakh, while the death count rose to 1,752 with six more fatalities.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting for supply of 25 lakh doses of the vaccine for the “Tika Utsav” (vaccine festival) to be held between April 11 and April 14.

The issue of shortage of vaccine stocks was headlined by Maharashtra — the worst-affected state — where over two dozen centres have been shut in Mumbai and more than 100 in Pune.

The centre, however, has stressed that vaccines are not in short supply.