The epicenter of the virus in India, Maharashtra, which no longer has photos in the New Wave

Photographer: Punit Paranjpe / AFP / Getty Images

India’s fight against a renewed wave of coronavirus infections is affected by the lack of vaccines in several states and cities, including the financial capital, Mumbai.

The nation’s hardest-hit state, Maharashtra, has only three days of vaccines in stock, Health Minister Rajesh Tope told reporters, while the country reported a new daily record of more than 126,700 cases on Thursday. Maharashtra alone accounts for about 55,000 infections. Other states, including southern Andhra Pradesh, are also operating low photos, according to the Economic Times.

The sharp jump in infections since early February, when the country reported about 11,000 infections a day, has forced states to restore movement borders and other restrictions. Maharashtra shut down all non-essential services, ordered private companies to work from home and closed malls and restaurants until April.

Indian Federal Health Minister Harsh Vardhan issued a statement on Wednesday in which he he blamed the lack and said some states, including Maharashtra, were “trying to divert attention from their poor vaccination efforts by continually changing target positions”.

India is hitting records of infections that stimulate the borders of Mumbai until April

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party is fighting five state elections, the ongoing health crisis could continue to gain international prominence after India curtailed vaccine exports this month as the second wave of Covid it appeared. The renewed restrictions also fuel public anger at the government’s failure to deal with the virus, despite a break of several months.

After the country shipped or donated more than 60 million doses of Covid vaccine, India last month said it would do so. slow down exports to focus on their own requirements. The largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, Serum Institute of India Ltd. is a key supplier to Covax, a program that is expected to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccine to middle- and low-income countries, many of which cannot afford to sign procurement contracts on their own. .

But domestic demand is expected to exceed supply, despite those export limits.

Amid the shortage, Modi announced on Thursday that he had received his second vaccine shot in New Delhi and asked citizens to register for the country’s immunization program.

Tight consumables

For now, a month’s supply of India’s two approved vaccines lasts just 17 days at maximum demand, regardless of existing stocks, according to Abhishek Sharma, a Mumbai-based company. health analyst at Jefferies.

“As vaccination picks up across India, we expect to see demand exceed supply in the next few months,” Sharma wrote in a report on Tuesday. “Approved vaccines increase capacity, but only slowly.”

Maharashtra has only 1.7 million doses of vaccines on hand, Tope said on Thursday, adding that the administration received 750,000 additional photos, but needed many more. He had previously asked the federal government to arrange at least 4 million doses a week to understand the state’s growing pandemic.

Several districts and cities, including Mumbai, were facing an acute shortage of fire and were forced to close immunization centers, he said.

However, Indian medical groups, public health experts and business leaders have called on the government to fully open the inoculation effort to all age groups as the second wave continues to build. Currently, the nation only allows people over the age of 45 to be shot. For a country with the size and density of India’s population, the curbs could only provide a temporary respite.

No blockages

India relies mainly on its inoculation effort to reduce the second wave, he said Charles Clift, senior consultant at the Center for Global Health Program at Chatham House in London. “Effective blocking in this environment is quite difficult, so you have to rely heavily on the vaccine to get control.”