The ongoing COVID-19 vaccination drive in Mumbai will come to a halt from Friday as the stock of vaccine doses in the city is about to end, Mayor Kishori Pednekar told PTI on Thursday.
Maharashtra had announced on Thursday that 26 vaccination centres in Mumbai have been closed as they wait for more vaccine doses from the Centre.
The claim of vaccine shortage in Maharashtra has landed the state in hot water with the central government. Union Health Minister Vardhan, in an impassioned press release on Wednesday, had accused the state government of making false statements in order to deflect attention away from the outbreak’s mismanagement.
However, Maharashtra government shot back, with state health minister Rajesh Tope saying that the Centre was providing less vaccine dosages to the state. Tope alleged discrimination in terms of vaccine provision to the state which has reported the most number of coronavirus cases in the country.
He said that while Maharashtra which has over 50,000 active cases was given only 7.5 lakh vaccine doses, other states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat had received far more doses.
“According to the latest release order of vaccines from Centre, Maharashtra has been given 7.5 lakh vaccine dosages only. While Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, etc have been given far more vaccines than Maharashtra. I talked to Dr Harsh Vardhan immediately after this, even Sharad Pawar talked to him. I raised issue of discrimination with us. We have most number active patients, positivity rate and death with 12 crore population. Why we are given so few vaccines?” he had asked.
Harsh Vardhan on Thursday said in a tweet that the hue and cry by certain states about partisanship by the Union government was just a farce, “an attempt to hide their own incompetence”. “Maharashtra and Rajasthan are 2 of the top 3 States based on allocation of #COVID19Vaccine doses. Both are non-BJP governed States,” he said.
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