Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Saturday said it seems the Centre is "stumbling again on the COVID-19 vaccination programme". Taking to Twitter, the former Union minister listed the Centre's "three grave failures" in the ongoing vaccination drive against coronavirus.
Chidambaram said the decision to extend the gap between two doses of Serum Institute of India's Covishield vaccine to 12-16 weeks was wrong.
"It seems that the Government is stumbling again on the vaccination programme. The original decision to prescribe a gap of 12-16 weeks between the first and second dose of vaccination was wrong. It was taken obviously because there was a shortage of supply. That decision prevails today even after we have millions of doses lying unutilised. The decision to maintain the earlier wrong decision is doubly wrong," he tweeted.
The second "grave failure", the Congress leader said was the "inability of the government to increase the percentage of the adult population that has received the second dose (currently 50%)".
Not permitting booster shot is the third mistake, Chidambaram said. "The third wrong is not to permit a booster shot for those who are vulnerable like frontline health personnel. Taken together, these three grave failures will cause immense harm to the people," he added.
Meanwhile, with the administration of 66,09,113 COVID-19 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's vaccination coverage has exceeded 141 crore, the Union Health Ministry informed on Saturday.
