Vaccine stock to last 10 days: Maharashtra health minister Tope to Javadekar

Rajesh Tope’s comments came after Union minister Prakash Javadekar blamed the Maharashtra government for mismanaging the Covid-19 vaccination drive

Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said during a press conference on Wednesday that the state’s Covid-19 vaccine stock will last for another 10 days.

Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope inspects the Covid-19 vaccine programme. (PTI)

He said that he apprised Union health minister Harsh Vardhan and health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday about the stock availability based on the current trend of daily vaccinations.

Tope’s comments came after Union minister Prakash Javadekar blamed the Maharashtra government for mismanaging the Covid-19 vaccination drive. He said the state’s ruling Shiv Sena members of Parliament were asking the Centre for more vaccines while Maharashtra has only utilised 44% of the stocks delivered so far.

In a tweet, Javadekar said, “Maharashtra Government had only used 23 lakh [2.3 million] vaccines out of the total 54 lakh [5.4] vaccines sent to the state, till 12th March. 56% vaccines remained unused. Now, Shiv Sena MP asks for more vaccines for the state. First mismanagement of pandemic now poor administration of vaccines.”

Tuesday saw the state’s highest single-day spike in 167 days with 17,864 fresh cases (18,317 cases were logged on September 30). The state saw the peak of the first wave on September 17 last year with 24,619 cases. The daily caseload in the state dropped to fewer than 2,000 cases in the first week of February.

On Tuesday, the state also reported 87 deaths, taking the toll to 52,996. The state’s tally stands at 2,347,328 with 138,812 active cases. The case fatality rate (CFR) of the state stands at 2.49% and the recovery rate at 95.66%.