Telangana health minister seeks urgent supply of Covid vaccine for state

“The state is only receiving vaccines in small quantities, and thus the officials have been unable to ramp up the vaccination,” said Rao in a letter to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

“It may be noted that as of today, the state has only 2.7 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine, which is not sufficient for even two days,” the letter said.

Rao urgently requested the Union health minister supply at least 50 lakh doses of Covishield to Telangana to enable the state to ramp up the pace of the precautionary dose vaccination.

Vaccination in Telangana

Telangana has achieved 106 percent coverage of the first dose of Covid-19 vaccination and 104 percent for the second dose for the 18 years-and-above population.

“Telangana is administering about 1.5 lakh doses per day. The state has decided to take a massive drive for the administration of precautionary doses to the eligible population,” said Rao

“Based on the demand, there is potential to administer over 3 lakh precautionary doses per day, which the state is not able to meet as there is a shortage of vaccine supplies, particularly for Covishield,” said Rao.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Union health minister said that more than 7.18 crore vaccines are still with the states and Union Territories and are left unutilised.

Covid-19 in Telangana

While Telangana recorded 528 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, the cumulative number of positive cases in the state reached 8,26,284.

The death toll in the state has remained at 4,111.

The highest number of new infections were reported from Hyderabad (196) district, followed by the Medchal–Malkajgiri (33), Ranga Reddy (31) and Karimnagar (25) districts.

There are 5,667 active cases in the state, and nearly 33,455 samples were tested to detect the contagious virus during the past 24 hours.

The test results of 652 swab samples are yet to be released.