Vardhan: No question of vaccine shortage, enhancing supply

After administering 9.43 crore of Covid vaccine doses till Thursday, India has 2.4 crore doses left in stock. A total of 36.91 lakh doses were given in the last 24 hours. If this rate of vaccination is maintained, the country will have vaccines only for the next seven days. Union health and family welfare minister Harsh Vardhan said 1.9 crore vaccines are in the pipeline. This would be enough for another three days.

The government has procured 13.5 crore vaccines in total. The minister tweeted that there was no question of shortage and they were continuously monitoring and enhancing supply. However, vaccine maker Serum Institute of India had not received any fresh order for the supply of vaccines from the government.

Vardhan chaired the 24th Group of Ministers Meeting on Friday and told members that the country had exported 6.45 crore doses to 85 countries. This included 1.05 crore doses to 44 countries as grants, 3.58 crore doses to 25 countries through commercial contracts and 1.82 core doses to 39 countries through Covax facility of WHO.

Ten states continue to show upward trajectory of daily cases with five states contributing 73% of active caseload. India’s daily new cases continued to rise to 1,31,968 new cases in the last 24 hours with 780 deaths and fatality rate of 1.28%. Around 0.46% of the patients were on ventilators, 0.31% were in ICUs and 4.51% on oxygen supported beds. India’s total active caseload has reached 9,79,608 cases. The county has till date seen 1,67,642 deaths.

Ten states including Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Rajasthan had shown a rise in daily new cases with 83.29% of the new cases are reported from these 10 states. Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new cases at 56,286. It was followed by Chhattisgarh with 10,652 cases while Uttar Pradesh reported 8,474 new cases. The five states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala cumulatively account for 73.24% of India’s total active cases. Maharashtra alone accounted for 53.84% of the total active caseload of the country.

Ten states account for 92.82% of the new deaths. Maharashtra saw the maximum 376 casualties and Chhattisgarh followed with 94 daily deaths. Disproportionately higher deaths in Maharashtra and Punjab had further increased during the last 14 days.

Starting February 2021, a steep increase was seen in cases in all the 11 states. Majority of the cases reported were in the younger 15 to 44 years of age while majority of the deaths were reported among those above 60 years. A high-test positivity rate is seen in Maharashtra at 25% and Chhattisgarh at 14%. The minister said 149 districts had no new cases in the last seven days.

The country has till date conducted 25.71 crore Covid-19 tests and 13.64 lakh tests were conducted in the last 24 hours. As on April 8, India’s seven-day case growth rate was at 12.93%, which was only next to the US and Brazil. Although the country was seeing an average growth rate of 5.37% in the daily cases, the national case fatality ratio has declined to 1.28%. The overall national recovery rate for the country declined to 91.22% in view of the ongoing surge situation.