As Maharashtra continues the battle against the second wave of COVID-19, the state government on Wednesday said the Central government has increased the supply of Remdesivir to the state.
While sharing information about Remdesivir injections, the state government said it is produced by May Cipla, Hetero, Zydus, Mylan, Sun Pharma, Dr. Reddy's and Jubilant.
The statement government further said that according to a letter dated May 1, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Central Government had sanctioned a total stock of 8,09,500 Remadesivir for Maharashtra from 21/04/2021 to 23/05/2021. Meanwhile, as per the letter dated 07.05.2021, the Union Health Ministry has increased the supply of Remdesivir by 347500 and a total of 1157000 stocks have been sanctioned for Maharashtra for the period of 21.04.2021 to 16.05.2021.
The state government informed that from 21/04/2021 to 17/05/2021, 11,37,073 vials of Remdesivir have been distributed to private and government hospitals.
However, the statement remains silent on whether the Centre has met the state government's demand of 70,000 vials of Remdsevir a day.
According to the statement, 1696.33 tons of medical oxygen was supplied to different districts of the state on May 17.
In an official statement, the Maharashtra government said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prepares a statement of supply to the Liquid Medical Oxygen Producers in the state by stating the amount of oxygen they need to supply in each district on a daily basis.
On May 19, 2021, the state government asked producers to supply 1718.5 ton of medical oxygen, it said. "On May 17, 2021, 1696.33 ton of oxygen was supplied to different districts of the state," it added. This includes 194.38 ton of oxygen received from other states of the country.
117.36 tons of liquid medical oxygen was received from Gujarat and 77 ton from Chhattisgarh's Bhilai.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday had said that Maharashtra cannot afford to rely on others for medical oxygen in the present COVID-19 situation and priority must be given to produce 3,000 metric tons of the vital gas per day in the state itself.
The second wave was a strong one and patients needed oxygen on a large-scale due to which the state government was encouraging the setting up of oxygen generation plants, he added.
