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Reality of deaths surpassing projections just merely because of politics ?

Addressing a press conference, senior spokesperson of the Congress Ajay Maken said with over 2.93 lakh COVID cases in a 24-hour span, the government is testing the patience of people instead of coronavirus positive patients.

The world’s largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India (SII), has sought Rs 3,000 crore grant from the government to ramp up capacity of the Covishield Covid-19 vaccine beyond 100 million doses a month that it will reach by the end of May. SII’s capacity ramp-up is critical since the government has already used up 8 crore vaccines so far and, at the current pace of 4-mn a day, has just enough supplies for another five days. At this moment in India where states are facing vaccines shortages, there should rather be a concoction of efforts of the government and concerned authorities like SII. Both SII and Bharat Biotech make 25 lakh doses daily while last week on an average we were using 31 lakh doses daily. Even at our current speed of countrywise vaccination we’re consuming more than our daily production capacity. The question pops up as to why are these vaccine companies unable to discern their full production capacity. 

Well politics made its way around here as well. On 5th March the CEO of SII, Adar Poonawala pointed out on the fact that USA was blocking raw material supplies crucial for vaccines because Joe Biden had promised that before his administration completes 100 days in office, he would give out 100 million vaccine shots and thereby invoked the Defence Production Act for this purpose resulting in shortage of supplies to the rest of the world hence creating an imbalance of vaccine supplies between developed countries like Canada which pre-ordered 60% of the vaccines and developing nations like India where the ground reality has apparently been hitting hard.

Another story of a company named Pfizer mRNA which worked out well in the western nations bullied Argentina in a way that if the company gets sued for the vaccine in the future , the Argentinian government will have to undergo the consequences.

Now coming onto India, 10 states have apparently claimed vaccine shortages out of which Maharashtra holds 40 % of the cases.The Union Health Ministry recently allocated 3.5 crore doses out of which Maharashtra’s quota is just 17.43 lakh against 44.98 of Uttar Pradesh which accounts for only 10% of the entire caseload. A similar politics game was seen in Mumbai where Devendra Fadnavis along with the Modi government made a shortage of Remdesivir ( a life saving drug) in BJP offices in Gujarat.

The second wave of coronavirus in India has crossed all limits making a record of over 3 lakh cases in a day and created severe shortage of oxygen cylinders. Many hospitals in India are now lacking oxygen supply and have had to stop operations. In many states the official data is missing and in some places black marketing of drugs have started happening. 

To its rescue, the government will have to pave its way by giving grants, using up funds accumulated in the PM care fund last year. Moreover, Vaccine distribution should be uniform and without any political interference. The process of vaccination is also hamstrung because it is available only in select hospitals and clinics. Therefore, the campaign should be more broad based and newer vaccines such as Sputnik should be considered for mass vaccination.During the epoch of a pandemic, there’s not much a common man can do rather than some mere precautions. The concerned authorities will have to try powering through saving people’s lives rather than being hypocrites and conducting mass rallies in the middle of a pandemic.


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