TS seeks more booster doses

Hyderabad: Telangana government on Friday urged the Centre to supply the corona booster doses to the states for speeding up the administration of vaccination to the masses.

Participating in a video conference convened by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on the preparedness of the States to handle any eventuality arising from the corona situation.

The state government informed the Centre that there were 8 lakh doses of Covaxin and 80,000 doses of Covishield available but there were no doses of Corbevax. Harish asked the Centre to supply the required vaccines to speed up administration of booster shots.

The Health Minister said Telangana had done well compared to many other states in giving booster doses. The average coverage was around 48 per cent as against the national average of 23 per cent. This was made possible because of continuous monitoring and vigilance and creating awareness among people, he said.

He also urged the Centre to give a list of symptoms of the BF7, the new subvariant of Omicron and the line of treatment that should be followed. He also suggested that the Centre bring a system of mapping to connect oxygen plants with nearby hospitals so that there would be no shortage of oxygen in hospitals if there was any spurt in cases.

He also drew the attention of the Centre to the lack of annual maintenance contract of ventilators supplied by the Centre. He said this was resulting in problems in making optimum use of the ventilators.