Decision on free vaccination tomorrow: Ajit Pawar

Maharashtra reported 48,700 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, according to the state health bulletin on Monday. The state also recorded 71,736 discharges and 524 deaths in the last 24 hours. With this, the total cases in the state mounted to 43,43,727 including 6,74,770 active cases and 36,01,796 discharges. The death toll, however, surged to 65,284 including the new deaths.

The capital city, Mumbai reported 3,876 new COVID19 cases, 70 deaths and 9,150 recoveries. With this, the total number of cases in the city reached 6,31,527.

The number of covid cases in the state has seen a light drop. While the number of corona patients in the country has been increasing rapidly over the last few days, the state's statistics are somewhat reassuring. Now the state government has decided to speed up vaccination so as not to increase covid cases. So free vaccinations are likely to be announced soon. A decision on this can be taken tomorrow, informed Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.

Journalists asked Ajit Pawar when the decision on free vaccination would be taken. A cabinet meeting will be held on wednesday in this regard where a decision related to free vaccination will be taken. I have signed the proposal for free vaccination of persons above 18 years of age. A decision in this regard will be taken in a meeting to be held tomorrow under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, replied Pawar.

A decision on free vaccination could be taken at tomorrow's meeting, Health Minister Dr Rajesh Tope said at a press conference. The government is fully committed to vaccinating the people of the state. We have demanded a dose of 12 crore vaccines from the Center. It has also been requested that the Center intervene to fix the prices of vaccines. "Currently, there is a shortage of oxygen in the entire country. We will issue a global tender for this," he said.

"Maharashtra has consistently been at the forefront of vaccination in the country. So far, 1,43,42,716 citizens have been vaccinated and if today's number is added up, this number is around 1 crore 48 lakh and after tomorrow's vaccinations, Maharashtra will cross the stage of vaccination of 1.5 crore citizens", said the Principal Secretary of the Health Department Dr Pradip Vyas in a press conference today.

"Maharashtra is ahead of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh in terms of the number of vaccination centres. It includes 5,347 government and 808 private vaccination centres", he said.