With shortage of antiviral Remdesivir drug having reported from many states, the central government has urged medical doctors and physicians not to prescribe the drug in an irrational manner and only use it for really serious Covid-19 patients who are on Oxygen help. Dr VK Paul who is the head of the country’s Covid-19 Task Force has mentioned that use of Remdesivir drug in house settings was unethical and other irrational prescription of the drug was unwarranted. Dr Paul additional mentioned that the drug must only be applied on patients who are admitted into the hospitals and are on Oxygen help, the Indian Express reported. Dr Paul additional requested the physicians to use the drug judiciously and rationally.
Despite many reports of Coronavirus shortage getting reported from various states, the Centre maintained that there was no shortage of the vaccine. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan was quoted as saying that the centre had supplied 13.10 crore vaccine doses to the states and states had only utilised 11.4 crore doses so far leaving about 1.6 crore unused doses with them.
Highlighting substantial amounts of doses wastage by several states Bhushan mentioned that barring some states like Kerala which has reported zero wastage, some states are wasting upto 10 % of doses. Bhushan additional mentioned that the states must also increase their arranging and acceptable unutilised doses of vaccine from one cold storage to an additional. Notwithstanding the denial by the central government, several regions in some of the worst impacted states like Maharashtra have reported shortage of vaccine doses with only a couple of days’ stocks left.
The Union Health Secretary also zeroed in on states that remained a important concern with regard to the pandemic which includes Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The major Health official additional mentioned that as several as 53 central teams have been deputed to the worst 53 districts to help the district authorities rein in the spread of Coronavirus.