Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday rejected Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's demand to vaccinate everyone above 25 years of age.
At a meeting with Chief Ministers to review the COVID-19 situation in the country, PM Modi said that we need to prioritise vaccinations according to the available stocks.
"You know how much vaccine is being produced. Now it is not that we can set up factories overnight. We will need to prioritise according to the available stocks. It is not that we can move stocks to one state and we will get the results. This thinking is not correct. We will have to think of the entire country," PM Modi said.
"The criteria set by more prosperous countries to vaccinate people against coronavirus is not different from what we have. You can study a bit. You are educated people and have all the information," he added.
Noting that the administration was appearing lax in many states with daily COVID-19 cases hitting new peaks, PM Modi urged CMs to strengthen their efforts for the next 2-3 weeks to check the spread of the virus on a "war-footing" and proposed to call the night curfew clamped in many places as "corona curfew" to maintain public awareness about the pandemic.
He also called for observing a vaccine festival between April 11-14 to inoculate the maximum number of eligible beneficiaries.
Modi also asked the CMs to focus on micro-containment zones to curb the infection and reiterated his call to work on the mantra of test, track, treat besides pushing COVID-appropriate behaviour and COVID-management to bring down the peak.
He further called for contact-tracing 30 persons within 72 hours of someone testing positive for the virus and asked states to not bother much about positive cases and focus on more testing.
