COVID-19 vaccination | Facing shortage of doses, urge Centre to speed up supply: Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope

Medical staff inoculates a senior citizen with the ‘Covishield’ vaccine at the Rajawadi Hospital in Mumbai, Maharashtra. (Image: AFP)

Various COVID-19 vaccination centres in Maharashtra are facing a shortage of vaccine doses, which is leading to people returning without being inoculated, state Health Minister Rajesh Tope said on April 7. Tope further urged the Centre to speed up the supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Currently, Maharashtra has 14 lakh vaccine doses that will be get used in three days, Tope told news agency ANI. He added that the state has demanded the Centre to provide 40 lakh more COVID-19 vaccine doses per week.

“I'm not saying that the Center is not giving us vaccines but the speed of their delivery is slow,” Tope said.

On April 6, Maharashtra became the first state to have administered over 80 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses so far.

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader also said that the Maharashtra government has urged the Centre to allow people in the 20-40 age group to get vaccinated against COVID-19 on priority.

We do not have enough vaccine doses at various vaccination centres, and people have to be sent back due to a shortage of doses. We have demanded from the Centre that people of age group 20-40 years must be vaccinated on priority: Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope
(file pic) pic.twitter.com/7ZmwJOBX5A

COVID-19 Vaccine

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How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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— ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2021

Tope said that authorities across the state were working to increase the number of beds for COVID-19 patients. “We are working on war footing to increase the number of beds in Pune, Mumbai, Nashik and other parts of the state,” Tope said.

Maharashtra reported 55,469 new COVID-19 cases on April 6, taking the tally of infections to 31.13 lakh. Additional 297 fatalities pushed the death toll to 56,330, according to the state health department. The state currently has 4.72 lakh active cases.

About 34,256 people recovered in the financial hub during the day, taking the total number of recoveries in the state to 25.83 lakh, the department said in a statement.

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The state's recovery rate stood at 82.98 percent and the fatality rate was 1.81 percent.

“We suspect that there is a new COVID-19 strain that is affecting people in a shorter duration of time. Samples have been sent to National Centre for Disease Control to ascertain this,” Tope added.

Asked about protests against the latest COVID-19 guidelines imposed in the state, Tope said that the Opposition should not provoke people. "Nobody should do politics in a pandemic situation. The chief minister has appealed this and Devendra Fadnavis (Leader of Opposition) supported it. Opposition should not provoke people for protests against restrictions. If there is some need of relaxations, the government will consider it in due course," the health minister added.

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