Centre cooperating with Maharashtra govt in tough times of pandemic: Sharad Pawar

A day after Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope's "vaccine shortage" remarks, NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Thursday said that the Centre is cooperating with the state government in the ongoing pandemic.

Speaking on the issue Pawar said, "The Central government is cooperating with the State government in this tough times of pandemic. We all have to come together and fight this menace farmers, traders, workers and people should understand the current situation. The State and Centre both have to come together and find out a way to fight the pandemic."

Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday said the state is facing a COVID-19 vaccine shortage and demanded 40 lakh doses every week from the Centre.

The Health Minister, addressing a press meet on the COVID-19 situation in the state on Wednesday, had said, "We do not have enough vaccine doses at various vaccination centres, and people have to be sent back due to a shortage of doses," Tope said. Staying short of blaming the Centre, the Minister said that the supply has to be speeded up.

"Currently, we have 14 lakh vaccine doses which will get over in the next three days. We've urged for 40 lakh more vaccine doses per week. I'm not saying that the Center is not giving us vaccines but the speed of delivery of vaccines is slow," he said.

Reacting to Tope's claims, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday lashed out at the Maharashtra government and accused it of "misgovernance" in tackling COVID-19, saying that it has followed "utterly casual approach" and is putting the residents in danger "by letting people escape institutional quarantine mandate for the sake of their personal vasuli".

In a statement, the Health Minister said he had seen statements made by public representatives in Maharashtra about the shortage of vaccines and asserted that it was nothing but "an attempt to divert attention from Maharashtra government's repeated failures to control the spread of pandemic".

The minister said the "lackadaisical attitude of the state government has singularly bogged down the entire country's efforts to fight the virus" and the lack of efforts of the part of the state government "is now clearly visible and come to haunt us all".

He accused the MVA government in Maharashtra of focusing its energies on "playing politics and spreading lies to create pc".

( With inputs from ANI )