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Let Bengal buy vaccines, provide Remdesivir: CM Mamata flags concerns to Centre
In all her recent rallies, including the one she addressed in Nadia district on Sunday, Banerjee blamed BJP leaders, including Modi, for spreading the pandemic by holding rallies and roadshows.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the state was running out of Covid-19 vaccines and essential medicines such as Remdesivir while cases were on the rise.
In the letter, Banerjee took a veiled dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), saying people coming from other states for election campaign “at the behest of some political parties” were responsible for the sharp rise in infection.
Citing her February 24 letter in which she sought the Centre’s permission to directly purchase vaccines and start a free vaccination campaign across Bengal, Banerjee wrote, “The state has not received the requisite clearance yet. In the meantime, number of cases in the state has also started to rise sharply, particularly in view of the arrival of large number of outsiders to the state for election campaign and other purposes at the behest of some political parties.”
In all her recent rallies, including the one she addressed in Nadia district on Sunday, Banerjee blamed BJP leaders, including Modi, for spreading the pandemic by holding rallies and roadshows. On Sunday, Union home minister Amit Shah held six back-to-back programmes in Nadia, East Burdwan and North 24 Parganas districts.
Banerjee, on the other hand, addressed a rally in Nadia and held two roadshows in Kolkata. These were attended by thousands of people.
On Saturday, 34 people died and 7,713 new cases were reported in Bengal, taking the total number of deaths since last year to 10,540 and the number of cases to 6,51,508. There were 45,300 active Covid-19 cases on Saturday.
Stating that vaccination is of “top importance,” especially in Kolkata, where concentration of population is very high, Banerjee wrote, “Unfortunately for us, the supply of vaccines from the Government of India is scarce and erratic, which has been negatively affecting our vaccination programmes…… We have to vaccinate around 2.7 crore and we need 5.4 crore doses. We request your urgent intervention to ensure that the state gets its requirement of vaccine doses fulfilled at the earliest.”
Incidentally, assembly polls in Kolkata will be held on April 26 and 29, in the last two of the remaining four phases. The results will be announced on May 2.
The chief minister told Modi that medicines were also in short supply.
“We need around 6000 vials of Remdesivir and 1000 vials of Tocilizumab daily. However, at present only 1000 vials of Remdesivir are available daily and no fresh supply of Tocilizumab is coming,” she wrote.
“The state should have an adequate stock of vaccine because it did not use the entire consignment that came from the Centre,” said Samik Bhattacharya, chief spokesperson of the Bengal BJP.
