The Telangana government has said that the people in the age group of 18-44 years will have to wait for some more time to get the vaccine doses. It is highly unlikely that they will get the jabs from May 1 as allowed by the Centre.

Telangana Health Minister Eatala Rajender has said that the State would require 3.6 crore doses to vaccinate about 1.8 crore people in the age group of 18 to 44 years. “We would require a daily supply of 10 lakh doses in order to meet the demand,” he said.

In order to get there, the State would need 5-6 times the present rate of doses administered now. On Wednesday, the State administered only 1.38 lakh doses.

The number of people who got both the doses in the State is only 5.78 lakhs as it administered 45.36 lakh doses ever since the vaccination drive began on March 1.

“We would like to complete the process in three months. In order to achieve it, we need about 1.20-1.30 crore doses per month,” the Health Minister said.

Compare this against the total capacity of the two companies (Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech). “It is only six crore doses. The Centre should make a vaccine plan ready,” he said.

A committee headed by Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar is in talks with the city-based vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech and pharma major Dr Reddy’s for supply of Covaxin and Sputnik vaccines.

58 patients died

Meanwhile, as many as 58 patients have died due to the Covie-19 infection and 7,994 new positive cases have been reported in the State on Wednesday. The number of active cases has gone up to 76,060, pushing the recovery rate further to 81.71 per cent.

For the first time, it went below the national average of 82.1 per cent.

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