AP govt announces it has no stock of COVID vaccine; CM writes to Modi for 60 lakh doses

Amaravati, April 16

The Andhra Pradesh government on Friday announced it has no stock of COVID vaccine even as Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy wrote another letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting that 60 lakh doses be immediately sent to the state.

On Friday, only about 4,300 doses of the coronavirus vaccine could be administered, the lowest in a day so far, before the stocks completely dried up.

The chief minister thanked the prime minister for sending 6.4 lakh doses of the vaccine to AP (on April 12 and 13) in response to his letter on April 9.

“I request you, sir, to instruct the officials concerned of Health Ministry to supply 60 lakh doses of COVID vaccine to my state to ensure that all the population above 45 years is vaccinated for the first dose in the next three weeks,” he said in the letter, the second he sent to the PM in a week.

Jagan said 6,28,961 people were vaccinated in Andhra Pradesh on April 14, “the highest single day COVID vaccination numbers by any state in the country”.

“We have not only established our capability of vaccinating over six lakh people per day, but also set up a model for all the states to emulate. However, we could not continue the same drive as the vaccine stocks have completely run out,” he said.

The state was poised to make the dream of vaccinating all vulnerable people a reality in the next three weeks if sufficient stocks of vaccine were made available, Jagan said.

The state government set a target of vaccinating 24 lakh people during the four-day ‘Tika Utsav’ (April 11 to 14).

“We have drawn out an action plan to cover six lakh people (four lakh in rural and two lakh in urban areas) per day during the Tika Utsav,” the chief minister had informed the prime minister in his letter on April 9.

However, the target could not be accomplished as both the Covaxin and Covishield stocks went dry by the first day of the four-day nation-wide event.

The 6.4 lakh doses sent by the Centre on April 12 and 13 enabled the state accomplish a total of 7.15 lakh vaccinations during the Tika Utsav.

The state has so far received a total of 46 lakh doses, a top official said.

The Medical and Health Department said in a release on Friday that 28,677 people were inoculated (first and second doses) in the state on April 15 and, with that, the entire COVID-19 vaccine stocks have been exhausted.

Sources in the department said they were expecting to receive another five lakh doses of the vaccine at the State Vaccine Store in Gannavaram by Sunday.

From there the stocks would be proportionately dispatched to the 13 districts. PTI

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