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Kerala facing acute shortage of Covid-19 vaccine: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan
Kerala is facing an acute shortage of vaccine and it is not in a position to provide shots to people in the 18-45 age group now, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Saturday, adding that repeated requests to the Union government for more doses failed to yield any result
Kerala is facing an acute shortage of vaccine and it is not in a position to provide shots to people in the 18-45 age group now, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Saturday, adding that repeated requests to the Union government for more doses failed to yield any result.
Talking to newsmen in a virtual meeting, the CM said the state was keen to vaccinate people in the 18-45 group but it was delayed due to a paucity of doses. “We will start as and when we get enough stock. But they will have to wait,” he said, adding that the government will give priority to people who received the first shot and waiting are for the second.
He said in some areas people are panicking over the non-availability of the second dose and are crowding vaccination centres. About 74 lakh doses were given in the state.
The chief minister said some laboratories were not conducting RT-PCR tests after the price of the test was reduced from ₹1,700 to ₹500. The government will not tolerate this attitude and he requested all labs to adhere to the price fixed by the government. Many labs complained that it was not feasible to conduct tests as per the latest price.
“We have decided after weighing all options. The kit is priced at ₹260 and the rest is the fee and other related heads. Protesting labs will have to realise that it was not time to make huge profits,” he said, adding if the protests continued the government will take action under relevant provisions of the epidemic control act.
Kerala reported 35,636 fresh Covid-19 cases on Saturday with a high test positivity rate of 24.33 per cent. It also reported 48 deaths in the past 24 hours taking total fatalities to 5,356. At least three districts reported more than 4000 cases - Kozhikode 5,554, Ernakulam 5,002 and Thrissur 4,070. The state’s active caseload also rose to 3,23, 828, according to the data released by the state health ministry.
