Last month, Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope asked Centre why the country’s worst-hit Covid-19 state is not allocated vaccine doses proportionate to its requirements.
However, now it has been revealed that while the other centres were facing the acute shortage of vaccines in the state, Tope’s home district Jalna apparently had carried the surplus that would last at least 10 more days.
A report has revealed that Tope had called Health Department officials and asked them to increase the allocation to 77,000 doses for his district that is 60,000 vaccine doses more than its allotment of 17,000.
While Jalna had only 773 active cases, with daily vaccination doses requirement of 600-1,000 till March end, it was given 77,000 doses however, Aurangabad, which is one of the six divisional storage centres for vaccines in the state, which has daily requirement of 7000-8000 doses, received only 1.95 lakh doses
Later, the official confirmed that they asked the state government, including Tope, to shift stocks from Jalna to other districts.
“We reasoned with the minister that stocks in Jalna would sit for days as other districts suffered. He eventually agreed to divert stocks from Jalna,” the official said.
Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis had also questioned the Maharashtra government’s vaccine distribution policy. “Maharashtra received 1.06 crore vaccines. The tweet was made by DGIPR on April 6. 91 lakh vaccines were used. That means there are 1.5 million vaccines left. So, what is the reason for deliberately closing the Centre today and spreading false news about vaccines?”
