The Centre must immediately call a meeting of all companies who are ready to manufacture Covaxin and “direct” them to take up production of this vaccine on a war-footing, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday.

This meeting should be convened in next 24 hours now that Covaxin-maker Bharat Biotech is willing to share the know-how for Covaxin manufacturing, Kejriwal told a digital press conference, outlining a 4-point solution for the consideration of the Centre to end vaccine availability crisis in the country.

" The Centre should direct them to produce covaxin on a war footing. It should not request but direct them", Kejriwal said.

The other suggestions are that the Centre must permit foreign vaccines in a big way in India and it should directly negotiate and buy the vaccines from foreign vaccine manufacturers instead of letting the 36 States/UTs to separately negotiate with foreign vaccine makers and thereby allowing the image of the country to get diluted.

After buying from the foreign vaccine makers, the centre should then distribute them to the States, Kejriwal said.

Besides approving foreign vaccine makers to start manufacturing in India, the Centre should also start talking with those Countries who have vaccine inventories in excess of their requirement and are willing to share some of the excess stock with India.

"There is a huge crisis of covid vaccines in the country. Union government should allow all the foreign vaccine makers to come to India", he said.

Kejriwal said that Delhi is being forced to shut down vaccination centres for 18-45 years age category due to shortage of vaccines. "Only a few vaccines are available at some centres which will be administered today", he said.

He also said that Centre should increase Delhi quota of Covid-19 vaccines, noting that the national capital's requirement was 80 lakh doses a month while it ended up getting just 16 lakhs in May. For the next month of June, the Centre has assured an allocation of just 8 lakh doses, he rued.

Delhi has so far administered 50 lakh doses and needs another 2.5 crore doses to inoculate all the eligible beneficiaries in the city, Kejriwal added.

Delhi Covid-19 update

Meanwhile, Delhi on Saturday recorded 2,260 new Covid-19 infections and 182 deaths in the last 24 hours. On Friday, new cases stood at 3,009 and fatality cases at 252.

The daily test positivity rate on Saturday dipped further to 3.58 per cent from 4.76 per cent on Friday, the latest Delhi Health Bulletin showed. The total death toll since the outbreak last year stood at 23,013.

The latest daily new infections count of 2,260 was lower than the single-day case level of 2,790 on April 1. The number of active cases as of Saturday stood at 31,308 lower than 35,683 on Friday.

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