The Maharashtra Congress on Wednesday demanded a national policy for the COVID-19 vaccination program, as the State faced an acute shortage of vaccines and lakhs of individuals were awaiting their second shot.
“This is not the first time that India is faced with a pandemic or an epidemic. For many years, the nation has successfully fought diseases like polio and has run widely-acclaimed vaccination programs. But the intent and courage shown by the previous governments are lacking in this Central government led by Narendra Modi,” State Congress president Nana Patole said during a press conference on Wednesday.
Mr. Patole said the nation was fighting COVID-19 without vaccines, medicines, oxygen and using sub-standard equipment provided under PM-CARES. “The mishandling of this situation has spread the message that the Modi government cannot handle this pandemic,” he said.
Mr. Patole said as Maharashtra continued to face a shortage of vaccines, it was important for the Central government to announce a national policy on vaccination.
Maharashtra had been leading in the vaccination numbers till Tuesday. But the pace of the vaccination drive in the State had to be slowed down due to a shortage of vaccines. As per the data till 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Gujarat had surpassed Maharashtra in terms of the actual number of individuals given the second shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. Gujarat had completed two doses of the vaccination of around 36,47,949 persons, while Maharashtra had completely vaccinated 36,44,405 persons.
Maharashtra, however, topped the total number of vaccinations among all others, with the State delivering 1,86,48,538 doses.
