Telugu states get vaccine stocks for ‘Tika Utsav’

Naveen S Garewal

Tribune News Service 

Hyderabad, April 13

Telugu states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have received large quantities of COVID-19 vaccine as the two states break into Ugadi festivities and start with the holy month of Ramzan.

Both state governments have appealed to the people to observe the festivals following the COVID norms. Both states have seen a shark spike in the Corona cases. 

Following a request by Chief Ministers K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy the states of Telangana and AP have received 4.60 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses, while AP has received 6.40 lakh doses. As part of the “Tika Utsav” Telangana administered a record 1,30,531 individuals across 1,336 Covid Vaccination Centres (CVCs) in the State. 

According to officials at the Department of Public Health and Family Welfare, the state received 2 lakh doses of Covaxin and 2.60 lakh doses of Covishield on Monday night. 

Earlier this week, the Telangana government wrote to the Union government seeking at least 30 lakh doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for the ongoing vaccination drive. At the time, the state government claimed that it was administering 1.15 lakh doses of vaccine per day and wanted more doses as it planned to increase the number to over 2 lakh vaccines per day.

Andhra Pradesh also received 6.40 lakh doses of vaccine doses in two batches. On Monday, the state received 4.40 lakh vaccine doses and on Tuesday, it received another 2 lakh doses of vaccines. 

On April 10 (Saturday) Telangana Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar had written to the centre saying, “As you are aware, Telangana state is left with only 5.66 lakh doses of vaccine, which would last for 3 days at maximum. Therefore, I would like to request you to urgently provide at least 30 lakh doses of vaccine to Telangana for the next 15 days.”