Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will soon write a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking enhancement of vaccine supply to Telangana as the current supply was not matching the requirements of the State.
Informing this during a press conference here on Wednesday, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar said the State government was corresponding with the Central government as well as vaccine manufacturing firms for the last few days for supply of adequate doses of vaccine to the State. The State had been asking for a liberalised policy for enhancing production of vaccines and other consumables, but there was no response so far.
He lamented that while the requirement of the State was to the tune of 3.5 crore doses to vaccinate all the 1.7 crore people aged between 18 and 45 years, the Centre had allotted 3.9 lakh doses for May. “This is just about 1% of the requirement,” he said. The policy and procedures were being controlled by the Centre, which was making allotment of the quantum of vaccine to States. “Though we have the manufacturing facility here, the allotment has to be done by the Centre,” he added.
Mr. Somesh Kumar also said that in spite of the shortage of vaccine, the government was able to vaccinate 42.24 lakh people so far, with two lakh being vaccinated every day on an average. The recent change in policy by the Centre over vaccination mandated that people over 45 years would be vaccinated first.
Pre-booking of vaccination had been put in place as the supply got reduced. This would also ensure there was no overcrowding in vaccine centres thus reducing the scope for spread of the virus.
The Chief Secretary however, exuded confidence that the situation would improve next month as vaccine production was set to increase and one more vaccine candidate was ready to enter the market.