COVID-19: "Industries should co-operate with state government to set up oxygen supply, testing and vaccination centers", CM Thackeray appeals

As many as 63,729 new COVID-19 cases and 398 deaths were reported in Maharashtra in the last 24 hours, taking the total active cases in the state to 6,38,034, the state health department informed on Friday. Amid the surge in covid cases in the state, patients are struggling to find beds in hospitals also there is shortage of Remdesivir injection used to treat covid patients. Relatives of COVID-19 patients in Pune on Thursday staged sit-in protest outside Collector's office demanding the supply of anti-viral drug Remdesivir, also used for the treatment of coronavirus.

Amid rising covid cases in the state Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Saturday appealed to the industries to provide all possible help to the state government in this battle. The state is facing oxygen shortage, apart from this, industries should increase facilities for medicines, beds, testing centers and speed up vaccination, the CM appealed. 

The third wave of Covid should not harm the industry and the economy should not suffer therefore, the Chief Minister appealed to the industries to set up such facilities by adopting a coherent working method from now on. Responding to CM's appeal, the leading industrialists of the state assured the Chief Minister that the entire industry world is with the state in the fight against Covid. In addition the industries also infored that they will take the initiative and start action immediately on increasing the facility of quarantine beds, establishment of test centers and increasing vaccination. 

The meeting was attended by Uday Kotak, Niranjan Hiranandani, Deepak Mukhi, Harsh Goenka, Salil Parekh, Neel Raheja, Sanjeev Bajaj, Anant Goenka, Baba Kalyani, B Tyagarajan, Anant Singhania, Banamali Agarwal, Ashwin Yardi, S. N Subramanian, Sunil Mathur, Sanjeev Singh, Naushad Forbes, Sulajja Firodia, Sameer Somaiya, Ashish Agarwal and other industrialists were also present.

Industry Minister Subhash Desai and Health Minister Rajesh Tope also shared their suggestions and said that there would be no problem in setting up facilities for industrialists.