Centre asks state to speed up vaccinations

The Centre has asked Maharashtra to scale up the pace of Covid-19 vaccination drive, especially in districts witnessing a sharp increase in cases.Taking a grim view of the number of vaccine doses lying unutilised in the state, central health secretary Rajesh Bhushan has written to Maharashtra chief secretary Sitaram Kunte seeking his intervention to scale up vaccination.The health ministry has pointed out that eight of top 10 districts of the country in terms of active cases are in Maharashtra and the only way to arrest the surge is to increase vaccination pace.81518999“I would like to reiterate that such methodology for increasing pace of vaccination in districts showing rising trend of active cases or high absolute number of active cases can prove to be beneficial by protecting those at highest risk of mortality and those who are involved in containment and surveillance activities,” Bhushan wrote to Kunte. “Covid-19 pandemic in the recent past has shown a rising trend in Maharashtra where the number of active cases has increased by 171.5% over the last one month from 36,917 cases on February 11,2021 to 100,240 cases on March 11, 2021,” Bhushan pointed out, emphasising the need to increase the pace of vaccination.Worst-affected districts in the state include Pune, Nagpur, Thane, Mumbai, Amravati, Jalgaon, Nashik and Aurangabad. Maharashtra plans to double the number of vaccine doses it administers in a day from 2.5 lakh now by next week. “We are increasing the number of vaccination centres,” N Ramaswami, National Health Mission director in Maharashtra, told ET. “On Sunday, we added 67 private facilities and now we have 2,000 active vaccination sites. We have also activated primary health centres. By next week we would be able to scale up vaccination to 5 lakh doses a day.”

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