Centre’s claims of vaccine wastage untrue, saysMaharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope

State heading down the path of a lockdown if the situation does not improve, he says

The sabre-rattling between the Centre and Maharashtra over the latter’s vaccine stock continued with State Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Friday refuting Union Minister Prakash Javadekar’s claim that the State had ‘wasted’ more than 5 lakh doses. In an interview to a television channel, Mr. Tope said the State was heading down the path of a lockdown if the situation did not improve. “The wastage quoted is actually national average wastage percentage. The State’s wastage is lesser than half of the national average wastage percentage,” the Health Minister said. On Thursday, Mr. Javadekar said the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government should not play politics over vaccination and that only 90,53,523 of the 10,619,190 vaccines supplied till date to the State had been utilised.