MUMBAI: The demand to open up Covid-19 vaccination for all age groups in Maharashtra got sharper with industrialist Anand Mahindra pitching for "emergency permission" for the state to vaccinate every willing person.
Maharashtra is in the throes of a second wave of the pandemic, with daily detections rising to levels seen during September-October 2020 peak. Mass vaccination is a way to reach herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The Mahindra group chairman tweeted on Monday about how half the new daily cases are in Maharashtra, “the nerve centre of the country's economic activity” and more lockdowns would be "debilitating".
Mahindra added that if “we don’t speed up the vaccination rate we will suffer second, third and fourth waves”. He further stressed that there is "no shortage of vaccines in the country".
Last week, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said he would seek permission from the Centre to open up vaccination in Pune for people aged over 18.
Dr Subhash Salunkhe, a technical advisor to the state government, has called for a decentralised vaccination programme and criticized the need to distribute vaccines uniformly across states when the Covid march has been uneven.