Centre to send 1121 ventilators to Maharashtra in next few days

On Saturday, Prakash Javadekar attended a review meeting over the COVID situation with Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in Pune. Officials from the Central government team which are in Pune to review the situation also attended the meeting along with other officials from the district administration.

Speaking to the media after the meeting, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said, "The major concern in Pune was about ventilators. So, I spoke to officials and concerned ministers of related departments. In next 3 to 4 days about 1121 ventilators will arrive in Maharashtra from the Centre of which 700 will come from Gujarat and 421 will come from Andhra Pradesh."

He also assured funding from the Centre for health staff recruitment under the National Health Mission.

Javadekar said, "The Central government is going to provide funds from National Health Mission to recruit the manpower required for tracing, testing and treatment of COVID patients in Maharashtra."

Union minister said the Central government will also help by providing oxygen supply from industries and places where oxygen is manufactured.

Maharashtra has been reporting a shortage of vaccines for the last 2 days. Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope and other ministers have raised this issue with the Centre.

Prakash Javadekar said, "Maharashtra has received 1.10 crore doses as per the latest report updated till yesterday. There are only 3 states in the country that have received more than 1 crore doses, they are Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Maharashtra has used 95 lakhs doses till yesterday and 15.63 lakhs doses are still with them as per yesterday's report. The State is very well aware of this report and I spoke to chief secretary Sitaram Kunte (CS) as well in this regard."

"This 15.63 lakhs doses must be distributed well so that there is no board saying the vaccine is not available at vaccination centres", he added.

Meanwhile, India on Saturday reported 1,45,384 new COVID-19 cases which is the highest daily spike in cases since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The single-day rise in coronavirus cases crossed the one lakh mark for the fourth consecutive day.

Maharashtra continued to remain the worst-affected state in the country with 55,411 new COVID-19 cases taking the case count to 33,43,951. The state has 5,36,682 active cases. (ANI)