After the emergence of the second wave of COVID-19, the battle against the pandemic outbreak has worsened as many states, countries have been facing financial crisis, loss of human lives due to lack of medical resources. India currently is one of the highly affected countries in the world as the cases have seen a massive rise on daily basis. Although, India has also been a messiah for many countries for exporting vaccines to other covid affected countries but it hasn't certainly helped the country itself. Many states, UTs have been facing shortage of vaccines and the respective state govts have blamed the Centre for exporting vaccines to other countries despite crisis situation.
Delhi deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today slammed the Centre and said that it exported COVID-19 vaccines to 93 countries in last 3 months. So far it has given 6.5 crore doses to them.
Highlighting death toll in India, Mr Sisodia said that around 1 lakh people have died of COVID-19 during the second wave in the country. He said that if vaccines were not exported, then it could have saved the lives of the people in India.
Over the export, he questioned, "Was it done just to improve the image of Central government and earn accolades from some other countries? He requested the Central government to vaccinate everyone in the country before exporting vaccines to other countries.
Further he said that some people in Central government would say that we are bound by international treaties. "US, France and EU countries also follow these treaties but none of them prioritized other countries, only we gave vaccines to others when our own people were dying," he added.
On the other hand, yesterday, the Centre decided to use the 50 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine for Indian citizens that were earmarked by the Serum Institute for export to the United Kingdom.
India's cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 16.94 crore doses as phase-3 of the nationwide vaccination drive expands further, the central government said on Sunday. More than 17.8 lakh beneficiaries of the age group 18-44 have been inoculated so far. The "liberalised and accelerated" phase-3 strategy of Covid-19 vaccination came into force from May 1.
The cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country stands at 16,94,39,663 as per the 8 pm provisional report on Sunday
