Maharashtra, which has been administering up to 12 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses daily, received 1.70 crore doses under the free supply quota and 22 lakh doses under the private hospital quota for September (an increase in the allocation against August). Public Health Department Additional Chief Secretary Dr Pradeep Vyas, in a letter, thanked Union Health Secretary Dr Rajesh Bhushan. He also sought access for the state to see the availability of doses with private hospitals. “At present, it has no access to this information. It seems that the Centre takes into account these figures while allocating additional doses to the states,” he noted.

The state government had sought 1.20 crore doses for August, but had received less. The Free Press Journal recently reported that the state government had made a fresh demand for the monthly allocation of 3 crore doses to boost the pace of its vaccination drive. “Maharashtra recently administered 1 million doses in one day. Our best performance was on August 21, when 11.04 lakh doses were administered in a day. Similarly, 9.90 lakh doses were administered on August 27, 10.35 lakh doses were administered on August 30, and 9.79 doses were administered on September 1. The state can easily administer about 3 crore doses in a month,” said Dr Vyas. On September 4, the state crossed the 12 lakh mark and administered a record 12,06,327 doses.

Dr Vyas added, “Maharashtra has suffered badly due to the pandemic. It stands second with regards to the number of active cases in the country. Delta plus variant cases are also the highest here. Hence, we need an additional allocation of 1 crore doses over and above what is already set for September.”