State urges Centre to provide 50 lakh doses of Covishield

Hyderabad: Telangana State Health Minister T Harish Rao on Tuesday demanded the Centre to provide 50 lakh doses of Covishield Vaccine to the State urgently to enable the State to ramp up the pace of precautionary doses.

Harish wrote a letter to the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandviya on the supply of vaccines. The minister said that the Telangana State had achieved 106 per cent coverage of first dose of Covid vaccination and 104 per cent for the second dose, for 18 years plus population, which was one of the highest in the country.

He further informed that the State now has decided to take a massive drive for administration of precautionary doses to the eligible population. Presently, Telangana was administering about 1.5 lakh doses per day. However, based on the demand there is a potential to administer over 3 lakh precautionary doses per day which the State was unable to meet as there was shortage of vaccine supplies particularly for Covishield. "It has been requested to the Government of India from time to time to increase the supply of vaccines. However, this State is receiving vaccines in small quantities, due to which there has been inability to ramp up vaccination from present levels. It may be noted that as of now, the State has only 2.7 lakh doses of Covishield which is not sufficient for even two days," said Harish Rao.

The Health Minister urged the Centre to supply atleast 50 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine to Telangana urgently to enable the State to ramp up the pace of precautionary doses.