Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has suggested four ways to boost COVID-19 vaccination production as he notified that the capital city has halted the rollout for the 18-44 age group due to a shortage of doses.
In a video address, the CM said, "All the doses that we received from the government (for 18-44 age group) have been used. A few doses were left, which will also be used by the evening. This is sad. We have written to the centre about this...as soon as we receive supply, we will reopen the centres," said the Chief Minister during a video address."
While explaining about the four suggestions, Mr Kejriwal said, "All vaccine makers in India, within 24 hours, should be ordered to manufacture Bharat Biotech's Covaxin to ramp up stocks."
Besides, he said that, foreign vaccine producers should be allowed to rollout their vaccines within 24 hours. He suggested that the centre should speak to international vaccine manufacturers, buy from them and distribute to states. States and union territories are battling with each other for vaccines.
Further he explained, "Some countries have stocked more vaccines than they need and the centre should request these nations to give the excess to India."
Concluding, he gave a final suggestion that international vaccine producers should be given permission to manufacture in India.
Besides his suggestions, he also notified the Centre that Delhi requires 80 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses per month to vaccinate the people of the national capital in three months. The Chief Minister mentioned that the national capital received just 16 lakh doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in May.
Earlier in the day, the Chief Minister informed Delhi recorded 2,200 COVID-19 positive cases, 6453 recoveries and 182 deaths in the last 24 hours and the positivity rate dropped to only 3.5 per cent.
