KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to make sure an satisfactory provide of COVID vaccines, medicines and oxygen to the state, which has been reporting a pointy spike in recent infections.
In her two-page letter to the prime minister, Banerjee mentioned that vaccines, medicines and oxygen are of paramount significance to comprise the second COVID wave.
Noting that vaccination is of high significance in densely populated West Bengal and notably Kolkata, she, nevertheless, lamented, “Sadly for us, the availability of vaccines from the Centre has been scarce and erratic, which is negatively affecting our vaccination programmes.”
Claiming that West Bengal is among the greatest performers in vaccination within the nation, she mentioned that the state is, nevertheless, now struggling attributable to an unsure provide of vials from the Centre. “We’ve to vaccinate round 2.7 crore folks for which we’d like 5.4 crore doses. We request for an pressing intervention to make sure that the state will get its requirement of vaccine doses fulfilled on the earliest,” she wrote.
She complained that her authorities desires to buy the doses from state funds and had earlier written to the prime minister about it however didn’t obtain “requisite clearance” but. Banerjee additionally urged Modi to make sure a gentle provide of important medicines to fight the surge in coronavirus circumstances.
“The provision of important medicines like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab is extraordinarily scarce and unsure in the present day, which has been a matter of grave concern for the docs right here. We’d like round 6,000 vials of Remdesivir and 1,000 vials of Tocilizumab daily,” she wrote.
“Presently, just one,000 vials of Remdesivir can be found daily and no recent provide of Tocilizumab is coming. It might be seen that the related authorities step up their efforts to make sure a gentle provide of those most important provides of medicines as quickly as doable,” she mentioned.
Banerjee additionally requested the prime minister to extend the oxygen provide to the state. “The state is keen to increase its assets to the fullest in tandem with the Centre to deal with the pandemic the nation is dealing with now and overcome it,” she added.
West Bengal, the place an eight-phase meeting election is underway, registered its highest single-day spike of seven,713 new circumstances on Saturday.
