The Centre must immediately call a meeting of all companies who are ready to manufacture Covaxin and “direct” them to take up production of this vaccine on a war footing, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday.
He said that this meeting should be convened in next 24 hours as Bharat Biotech is willing to share the know-how for manufacturing the Covaxin vaccine. In a digital press conference, Kejriwal also outlined a four point solution to end vaccine availability crisis in the country.
Kejriwal’s solution
“The Centre should direct them to produce Covaxin on a war footing. It should not request, but direct them,” Kejriwal said.
The other suggestions are that the Centre must permit foreign vaccines in India and it should directly negotiate and buy the vaccines from foreign vaccine manufacturers instead of letting the 36 States/UTs separately negotiate with foreign vaccine makers.
After buying from the foreign vaccine makers, the Centre should then distribute them to the States, Kejriwal said.
Besides approving foreign vaccine makers to start manufacturing in India, the Centre should also start talking with those countries who have excess vaccine inventories to share some of the excess stock with India.
Acute Covid vaccine shortage
“There is a huge crisis of Covid vaccines in the country. Union government should allow all the foreign vaccine makers to come to India,” he said.
Kejriwal said that Delhi is being forced to shut down vaccination centres for 18-45 years age category due to shortage of vaccines. “Only a few vaccines are available at some centres which will be administered today,” he said.
He also said that Centre should increase Delhi quota of Covid-19 vaccines. He noted that while the requirement was 80 lakh doses a month, it received just 16 lakh doses in May. For the next month of June, the Centre has assured an allocation of just 8 lakh doses, he rued.
Delhi has so far administered 50 lakh doses and needs another 2.5 crore doses to inoculate all the eligible beneficiaries in the city, Kejriwal added.