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Reacting to Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan’s allegations of the Maharashtra government’s “inability” to act responsibly amid the pandemic, after the Maharashtra government wrote to them asking for more vaccines, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, on Wednesday, 7 April, said:
Priyanka Chaturvedi further said that she would expect a scientific response from Dr Vardhan, because he is the health minister of India and not a political spokesperson of a party.
Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday, 7 April, claimed that the state doesn’t have enough vaccine doses at several vaccination centres, resulting in people being sent back. He added that the state will run out of doses in three days.
However, Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan had on Wednesday refuted Tope’s statement, saying that such allegations are “utterly baseless”.
The Shiv Sena MP, in a video shared on Twitter, asked what was wrong with the letter the Maharashtra government had written to the Union health minister.
“I believe he was the Union health minister. I did not realise that he continues to hold his position as a spokesperson of a political party more dearly than the responsibility that he has at a time when India is at the grip of a second wave of the pandemic, which has seen lakhs of deaths.”
She also pointed out that the need of the hour is to ensure that the vaccination reaches maximum people.
Priyanka Chaturvedi in her video also posed the following questions to the Union health minister:
She further said:
“I have seen statements made by public representatives in Maharashtra about shortage of vaccines. This is nothing but an attempt to divert attention from Maharashtra government’s repeated failures to control the spread of pandemic,” the Union Health Minister had, previously, said in a statement.
The inability of the Maharashtra government to act responsibly is beyond comprehension, he said, adding that spreading panic among the people of the state is only compounding the effect.
“Throughout the last year, as the health minister of India, I have been a witness to the misgovernance and utter casual approach of Maharashtra government in battling the virus. The lackadaisical attitude of the state government has singularly bogged down the entire country’s efforts to fight the virus,” he added.
“We do not have enough vaccine doses at various vaccination centres and people have to be sent back due to a shortage of doses. We have demanded from the Centre that people of age group 20-40 years must be vaccinated on priority,” Tope had told news agency ANI, on Wednesday.
Mumbai’s mayor Kishori Pednekar reiterated Tope’s claim, saying, “There is a shortage of COVID-19 vaccine doses in Mumbai. Yesterday, we had 1,76,000 vaccine doses but in the coming days, we will require more vaccines,” ANI reported.
As per a senior health official, many districts in Maharashtra will run out of their stock in a day or two.
State health minister Tope added that while Centre is supplying them with enough doses, the speed of delivery of vaccines is not satisfactory, and added that Maharashtra has a vaccine wastage rate of 3 percent, which is half of the national average vaccine wastage rate of 6 percent.
Speaking on the the supply of medical oxygen, he said said the state is prepared to close down industries using access oxygen, “12 metric tonnes of oxygen is produced and over 7 tonnes of oxygen is consumed daily. We've demanded that we should be supplied medical oxygen from nearby states. If needed, we'll close down industries that use oxygen but won't let supply of medical oxygen be affected.”
Maharashtra is currently at the peak of a second COVID-19 surge, and is vaccinating about four lakh people per day.
On the new COVID restrictions, Tope said that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has appealed for the same, and received ex-CM Devendra Fadnavis’ support. “Nobody should do politics in a pandemic situation,” the minister added.
(With inputs from ANI, PTI)
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