Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia urged the Centre on Monday to make the data on vaccines supplied to states public and sought 3.82 lakh doses of the vaccines for people aged 18-44 years in the city.
Currently, Delhi has a vaccine stock of four days for those aged 45 years and above, he said, adding that, for the 18-44 age group, the city will run out of stock in three days.
Sisodia said he has written to the Centre citing three requests. “The Centre has written to us, saying we will get 3.83 lakh doses for the 45-plus age group but we will not get vaccines for the 18-44 age group in May,” told an online media briefing.
“We need more vaccines for the 18-44 age group. We are ready to buy those but at least make them available. We will have to close the vaccination centres for the 18-44 age group after three days,” he said.
Sisodia also urged the Centre to make the data of allocation of vaccines to the states public. “There should be transparency in the data. For Delhi, we need to know how much is being given to the government and how much to the private sector. Even for other states, we need to know the figures. Please let us know about the vaccine availability for the next two months so that we can chalk out the vaccination programme for June and July,” Manish Sisodia said.
On Sisodia’s statement, BJP state president Adesh Gupta said that the Kejriwal government is only doing drama and telling lies. “The fact is that there is injection stock everywhere for three days. After three days, the number of stocks will increase. According to the capacity of freezing power, these injections are given at all the centres,” he said to iTV Network.
The Delhi government has already stopped vaccinations for people in the 18-44 age group owing to a shortage of Covaxin doses and declared that Covishield doses would last for another four days.
Despite the shortage, the government started walk-in vaccinations for people above 45 years of age, healthcare workers and frontline workers from Monday. Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi said on Monday that there are people who don›t have smartphones and can›t register online. Walk-in vaccinations are happening in 97 centres in the city.
After almost 42 days, the national capital on Monday registered 4,524 cases, indicating it has successfully lowered its graph of Covid-19 cases. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal credited the lockdown for this decline. However, he extended the lockdown for another week, articulating that there is no scope for laxity. “We don›t want the gain made in the past few days to be lost all of sudden. So, the lockdown is being extended for another week till 5 am on May 24,” PTI quoted him.