Bharat Biotech denied vaccine for Delhi on Centre's order: Manish Sisodia

New Delhi: The Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, slammed the Centre's vaccine distribution policy, citing Bharat Biotech's refusal to provide additional vaccines to Delhi.

He accused the Centre of exporting the vaccine doses while the country is reeling from scarce supply amid rising COVID cases.

Attaching a letter written by Bharat Biotech in response to his demand that additional vaccines for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) be provided to Delhi, Sisodia said that the pharmaceutical company refused to comply with his demand citing directives of the Central government and limited supply.

"Vaccine mismanagement by Centre Govt. Covaxin refuses to supply vaccines citing directives of Gov. & limited availability. Once again I would say exporting 6.6cr doses was the biggest mistake. We are forced to shut down 100 Covaxin-vaccination sites in 17 schools due to no supply," he tweeted.

Apparently, India had supplied more than 6.6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, mostly Covishield, to 76 countries till March.

Bharat Biotech's letter said that the firm is unable to meet the unprecedented demand for Covaxin even though they had increased production. "...in spite of increasing production every month, we are unable to keep up with the demand. Further, we are making dispatches as per the directions of the government officials concerned. We therefore sincerely regret that we cannot make any additional supplies as required by you," the letter read.

This comes when the Delhi government had to shut down 125 vaccination centres catering to the 18-44 age group on Tuesday as they ran out of vaccine.