In a press conference today, Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said that to vaccinate all the people of Delhi, the Delhi government had asked for one crore 34 lakh (13.4 million) vaccine doses. Of these, it had asked for 67 lakh (6.7 million) from Serum India’s Covishied and 67 lakh (6.7 million) from Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. 

Yesterday, May 11, in a letter from Bharat Biotech, the vaccine manufacturer informed the Delhi government that it was unable to provide the required doses because of which about 100 Covaxin vaccination centres in 17 schools had to be shut down, said Sisodia.

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In the letter, the company informed: “We are making dispatches [to state governments] as per the directive of the concerned government officials [central government officials]. We therefore sincerely regret that we cannot make any additional supplies as required by you,” read out Sisodia during the press conference.

The deputy CM then went on to say that the letter made it amply clear that it was the central government which will decide who will get how much vaccine, how many vaccines will be administered to the people of India and how many would be exported or sold to other countries. 

If the Centre is taking responsibility for vaccines, then it should take responsibility that if 6.5 crore (65 million) vaccines had not been exported, then people of Delhi and Mumbai would have got double dose of vaccine twice, Sisodia said. 

The deputy CM said that the Centre should stop all export of vaccines. And there was a need of mass scale production of the vaccines as the two companies (Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech) had limited capacities. “Else our people will keep dying in third wave, fourth wave, fifth wave, as people have died in the second wave,” he said.  

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