Amid a shortage of vaccines, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said that Russia's Sputnik V will be providing vaccine doses to the national capital but the quantity is yet to be decides. However, the Chief Minister has yet again targeted the Centre urging to provide adequate amount of vaccine doses to Delhi and other states too.
The Aam Aadmi Party Chief said that there's no vaccine in Delhi. "For 4 days vaccination centres for the 18-44 age group are shut and not just here but across India, several centres are shut. Today when we should have opened new centres, but now we are also shutting the existing ones, which is not good," he added.
He further exlained that this is the time to unite and work for both state and Centre, and not work separately. "We need to work as Team Indi, it's the Centre's responsibility to provide vaccine, not states. If we delay it more, don't know how many more lives will be lost," he added.
The CM questioned, "Why isn’t this country buying vaccines? "We can’t leave it on states," he asserted.
He asked, if Pakistan attacks India, will we leave states on their own? Will UP buy its own tanks or Delhi its own arms?
In recent days, a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines in Delhi had let to the closure of numerous inoculation centres, even as the state government sought to procure vaccines directly from the manufacturers.
Pfizer and Moderna had refused the Delhi government for providing the vaccines.
The Centre has asked states to procure vaccines from the international market, but no state government has been able to purchase even "one additional vaccine" so far, he said.
"All state governments have tried everything, they have (floated) global tenders and talked to all vaccine-manufacturers. All firms have declined to talk to us," he said.
The Centre needs to demonstrate a sense of urgency and run the vaccination drive on a war-footing, he added.
