NewDelhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday suggested that the Centre should share the COVID-19 vaccine formula of the two leading manufacturers with other companies in the country in order to scale up production.
“Not just two, several other companies should be deployed to produce COVID vaccines. Centre should collect the formula to produce vaccines from these 2 companies & give it to all those companies that can produce vaccine safely. Centre has the power to do this in these difficult times,” CM Kejriwal said.
The Delhi CM said that there is a shortage of vaccines across the country and an urgent need to ramp up its manufacturing on war footing while developing a national policy to inoculate everyone in the next few months.“Only 2 companies are producing vaccines. They produce only 6-7 crore vaccines a month. This way, it’ll take over 2 years to vaccinate everyone. Many waves would’ve come by then. Important to increase vaccine production on war footing & frame national plan to vaccinate all,” Kejriwal said.
The AAP national convenor said the Centre should ensure that all the vaccine manufacturing plants in the country start producing COVID doses.
The two COVID vaccine manufacturers can be provided royalty for use of their formula by other companies, he said. He said scaling up vaccine production is needed to vaccinate everyone before the onset of the next wave of COVID-19.
He also urged the Centre to provide more vaccine doses for mass vaccination of Delhi residents at the earliest.
“Right now, we’re administering 1.25 lakh doses every day. We’ll soon begin vaccinating over 3 lakh people every day. We aim to vaccinate all residents of Delhi within the next 3 months. But we’re facing a vaccine shortage. We’re left with stock that will last only a few days,” the Delhi CM said.
The Chief Minister said that the coronavirus cases were declining in the national capital and the AAP government has increased the number of Oxygen beds in the past few days to met any eventuality.
“Corona cases are going down in Delhi, so is the second wave. With your cooperation lockdown was successful. We’ve increased the number of Oxygen beds in the past few days. Y’day we started 500 new ICU beds near GTB Hospital. Now there’s no shortage of ICU & Oxygen beds in Delhi,” the CM said.
Bureau Report
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