Aam Aadmi Party leader Aatishi Marlena on Monday slammed the Centre for not delivering sufficient COVID-19 vaccines to Delhi. She said that the national capital did not receive not even a single extra dose despite the universal campaign being launched from today.

“Centre’s vaccination campaign is only for advertisements and announcements, the reality is that Delhi has not been supplied even a single dose today, when a universal campaign was supposed to be launched,” Marlena said.

Advertisement

“We’ve received this information from the Central Government that next month, that is from 1st of July, Delhi would get a total of 15,19,000 doses of vaccine. 15,19,000 doses are the same number of doses that have been received in many previous months or only less than that. In June, we received approximately 14 lakh doses of vaccine, if we combine both the categories of 18 to 44 and 45+. If we look at May, Delhi received nearly 13.25 lakh doses of vaccine. In April, we received 23 lakh doses of vaccine. So, when the Central Government was not running a universal campaign, when the vaccination campaign was only going on for 45+ in April, at that time Delhi was given 23 lakh doses of vaccine. And now when a full-fledged universal campaign is being executed throughout the country, only 15 Lakh doses are being made available,” she added.

Aatishi also said that centre has still not allowed WHO approved vaccines like Pfizer, Moderna & Johnson & Johnson to be rolled out in Delhi.

“It is our appeal to the Central Government to not run programs just for name-sake. You said, a few months back, that we’re decentralizing the system and that the states can buy vaccines for themselves. But when the states went to buy these vaccines, you tied the companies’ hands from behind and said that you can sell only those numbers of vaccines that are allowed by us. So, there was no benefit of decentralizing. Today, you said that from 21st June we’ll run a centralized vaccination campaign where the Central Government will provide vaccination to everyone. Now the centralized vaccination campaign has started also yet Delhi has not received even a single dose of vaccine. What kind of misplanning and mismanagement is this from the side of the Central Government? Sometimes we come up with one policy and then another time we come up with another policy. The policies keep on changing. India and Delhi do receive these new policies; however, vaccines are never received.” she said.

On Monday, the infection rate in Delhi hit the lowest mark since the Covid-19 pandemic struck the national capital.

Of the total 57,128 samples sent for the testing, only 89 (0.16 per cent) turned positive for the viral infection during the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, 11 more people lost their lives to the Covid-19.

With this, the tally of COVID-19 cases in the national capital has reached over 14.32 lakh, while the death toll mounted to 24,925, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department.

Meanwhile, in terms of cases, this is the lowest daily tally of the Covid-19 cases the national capital recorded in 2021 so far.

Delhi had reported the first case of Covid-19 on March 1 last year. On February 16, the city had reported 94 cases, its lowest till the tally fell further to 89 on Monday.