New Delhi: Delhi has been facing a shortage of Covid vaccine since the third phase of vaccination started on May 1. Everyone of the age 18 and above is now eligible to get vaccinated and thus a lot of people are registering themselves for the same. However, the national capital does not have enough stock of the vaccine to meet the requirements as told by the Delhi Health Minister.
In the wake of the same, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has urged the Centre to allow more manufacturers to produce the vaccine. Currently, only two manufacturers, Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech are producing Covishield and Covaxin respectively.
According to Chief Minister Kejriwal, Delhi will need more jabs of the vaccine shot as around 3 lakh people will be vaccinated on a daily basis in the national capital. He said, “Right now, we're administering 1.25 lakh doses every day. We'll soon begin vaccinating over 3 lakh people daily. We aim to vaccinate all residents of Delhi within the next 3 months. However, we're facing vaccine shortage. We're left with stock that will last only a few days.”
He further added, “Only two companies are producing vaccines. They produce only 6-7 crore vaccines a month. This way, it'll take us over 2 years to vaccinate everyone. Many waves would've come by then. It is important to increase the vaccine production on war footing and frame a national plan to vaccinate all.”
He has urged the Centre to make possible more production of the vaccine by allowing other capable manufacturers to produce it. He said, “Several companies should be deployed to produce vaccines, not just two. Centre should collect the formula to produce vaccines from these two companies and give them to all those that can produce vaccines safely. Centre has the power to do this in these difficult times.”
