Shazneen Mistry
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has suspended over 300 vaccination drive centers in the city due to the lack of vaccine doses. There are more than 400 vaccine centers in the city, including private hospitals but the public vaccine centers will temporarily remain close while the vaccines at the private centers are still available.
A BMC official said that “We were informed to receive vaccine stock soon and after this, we will distribute these vaccine doses to all public vaccination centers. Once the distribution is done, the drive will resume.” He also included that, “we could have kept the vaccination drive going by keeping vaccination in the second half of the day but due to fear of crowding by beneficiaries coming for walk-ins, vaccination centers all together will be kept shut for the time being.”
To tackle the problem, the Ministry of Health has distributed detailed booklets to BJP MPs on the Centre's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing vaccination drive to tackle critics. The booklet claims that the crisis was not handled just by Union or state governments but with a joint effort of the whole nation. India managed to "evade" the catastrophic effects of Covid-19.
It has also come to our notice that the United States is helping India and other countries as well to be able to produce Covid-19 vaccines by themselves, and that too free of cost as they won’t be charging them for anything, said President Joe Biden said during a press conference at White House. The US has committed to providing over half a billion vaccine doses around the world, he added.
India has reported 42,625 Covid-19 cases and 562 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This comes a day after the country reported 30,549 cases and 422 deaths. With this, the country's total Covid-19 cases reached 3,17,69,132, while the death toll surged to 4,25,757. India's active caseload stands at 4,10,353.
To address this matter the BMC has also mentioned that in the city, overall, 7,336,171 vaccine doses were administered till now, and 1,809,075 citizens are fully vaccinated, including 228 bed-ridden citizens.
To make sure that there is no more increase in the covid cases and to keep the people safe, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said that Section 144 will remain in place till 11 pm and the night curfew will continue from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day. They also added, there will be no restriction on the movement of people from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. but a gathering of people is prohibited at all times.
