New Delhi: Amid a rapid surge of Covid-19 cases, unceasing deaths and a severe shortage of basic medical aid, India's hope seem to be ebbing. Ironically, just a few months back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that India has successfully contained the spread of coronavirus.
In January, Modi said India braved all difficulties in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and can strengthen global supply chains.
Speaking to ETV Bharat over this, Congress' senior spokesperson Pawan Khera said, "In January, we saw Prime Minister patting himself on his back at the World Economic Forum when he had prematurely boasted that India has won the battle against COVID-19.
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The country needs to know what went wrong that we are mismanaged to this extend,"
He further added, "When we see people looking for oxygen, hospital beds, ambulances and look at the mess that our vaccine programme has landed in. Tomorrow is May 1, but are we prepared? States after states are saying that we have no vaccine. So this also exposes the fact that instead of preparing for the second wave, which experts did warn India for, the government was busy patting itself on the back."
Khera alleged, "The onsight oxygen plants for hospitals, ventilators, augmentation of beds in hospitals, horribly wrong policies of exporting medicines, vaccines, which now we are importing, all this shows that we went wrong. The buck has to stop somewhere."
Meanwhile, Modi had also claimed during his speech, "In just 12 days, India has vaccinated more than 2.3 million healthcare workers. In the next few months, we will achieve our target of vaccinating 300 million elderly people and people with comorbidities."
Earlier on Friday, Congress also discussed the prevailing COVID-19 situation across the country, where senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh had said, "We had a target set by Prime Minister that by August, 300 million Indians would be vaccinated. Till today, only 10 per cent of this target has been achieved. This is not the time to think of market economics.
"This is a national emergency."
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Slamming the government, he alleged, "We are not just in a grip of Covid virus. We are in a grip of an ideology virus, which looks at the public sector suspiciously, which thinks that it is a time for market economics. We have to vaccinate people."
The deadly second wave of Coronavirus has put more stress on the already burdened healthcare system.
During an interaction with ETV Bharat, Congress Spokesperson Gaurav Vallabh said, "Experts had warned about the second wave in October 2020. But what have we done in the past 7 months? How many oxygen concentrators we bought? How many oxygen plants we set up? How many capacities of our vaccine manufacturers we had increased? Our people are dying and we are busy exporting vaccines? Is this nationalism?
Questioning the Centre, he said, "Government had allocated Rs 35,000 crore in the Union Budget for vaccination but now it is saying that states have to buy vaccines at different prices. There are six different prices for two vaccines. This is a true example of 'Aapda ko Avsar banana' (making profit out of crisis). I want to urge all the policymakers, whether it is PM Modi or Union Health Minister, to please don’t leave people in such crisis."
"It is my humble request to the Central government to save people from this crisis, prepare a vaccination policy, set a target for next 6 months and improve the capability of vaccine manufacturers so that almost 80 per cent of the population may get both the doses of vaccines," Vallabh asserted.
