Remdesivir distribution: long lines in front of BJP’s Surat office

ON MONDAY Meena Patel, 50, reached the BJP headquarters in Udhna area of Surat from her house in Dindoli at 6 am to get one dose of the antiviral Remdesivir injection for her mother Maruben, 76, admitted at the Udhna hospital since Friday after complications due to Covid-19.

She was a part of the over 100-metre-long queue of people waiting for the Remdesivir injection, which has been in short supply, outside the BJP office. She was the 101st in the queue.

At 10.40 am, a private car carrying Remdesivir injections – each boxes containing 48 vials of 100 mg of Remdac, the brand name of the injection manufactured by Ahmedabad-based Zydus Healthcare, entered the BJP office. BJP youths collected the boxes from the car to the basement. Around 11 am, members of the BJP youth-wing workers along with former corporator Manu Patel, distributed orange-paper tokens with the lotus symbol – BJP’s election symbol — and numbers on them. The token also had the date and signature of BJP IT department’s local head Vijay Radadiya.

At the first chance, Patel took her token and went back in the queue where everyone was given a pack of biscuits and a bottle of water. The party, sources said, handed out tokens as per the stock of vials it had received. Policemen, on guard outside the closed gate, would now allow only these people with tokens to enter the office premise.

“In the first round, they took 50 people inside the premises. My turn came in the second round,” Patel told The Indian Express. Once inside there was another batch of 50 people, and Patel had to wait another hour.

Only those seeking the Remdesivir injections were allowed inside. Those in the batch of 50 had to first get themselves registered on the first floor where six people were seated on three different tables with computers. While five others were controlling the queue.