New Delhi (TIP): India‘s top Covid-19 adviser Dr. V.K. Paul has said the states had coerced the Centre into expanding the availability of vaccines despite being aware of being inadequately prepared. The Centre has been facing heavy flak lately for falling vaccination rates – primarily caused by vaccine shortage – when the need of the hour is rapid vaccination of the populations at risk. Dr. Paul, Chairman, National Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration, in a press statement on Thursday, May 27, said that vaccine supply, which was managed by the Centre from January-April, was “well administered” but wasn’t up to the mark in May.

The Centre did all the “heavy-lifting”, which included funding vaccine manufacturers, accelerating approvals, ramping up production and bringing foreign vaccines to India.

A municipal staff administering Covid vaccination at Selaiyur in Tambaram on Wednesday, May 26, during the complete lockdown.

“The vaccine procured by the Centre is supplied wholly to the States for free administration to people. All this is very much in the knowledge of the States. The Government of India has merely enabled the States to try procuring vaccines on their own, on their explicit requests. The States very well knew the production capacity in the country and what the difficulties are in procuring vaccines directly from abroad,” said his note, which was released by the PIB (Press Information Bureau)in the form of a ‘Myths Vs Facts’ questionnaire.

“States, who had not even achieved good coverage of healthcare workers and frontline workers in three months wanted to open up the process of vaccination and wanted more decentralization. Health is a state subject and the liberalized vaccine policy was a result of the incessant requests being made by the States to give states more power.

The fact that global tenders have not given any results only reaffirm what we have been telling the States from day one: that vaccines are in short supply in the world and it is not easy to procure them at short notice,” the note said.

The note, however, had no answer to the question, raised by many critics of its vaccination policy, as to why it delayed placing vaccine orders till January 2021, when so many other countries had placed procurement orders by mid-2020 itself. Also, there was no response as to why no foreign vaccines were given emergency use authorization in India until well into 2021.