Need Vaccine, Medicines: Mamata Banerjee Flags Bengal's Covid Spike To PM

Mamata Banerjee wrote, " the number of cases in the state has also begun to increase sharply, particularly in view of coming of a large number of outsiders to the state for election campaign and other purposes"

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking help to contain the surge of coronavirus in the state, which she said, has been brought in by "outsiders" coming to campaign for "some political parties". In her letter, she outlined three areas -- including the supply of vaccines and crucial drugs like Remdesivir -- in which the Centre's help was needed. Citing her letter of February 24, in which she sought clearance for direct purchase of vaccines with state funds to inoculate the entire state, she wrote the state has not received it yet. "In the meantime, the number of cases in the state has also begun to increase sharply, particularly in view of coming of a large number of outsiders to the state for election campaign and other purposes at the behest of some political parties. As such, in the present situation, we have to significantly scale up our capacities to tackle the pandemic on war footing," she wrote. Mentioning vaccination as the first stop to this goal, she wrote, "We have to vaccinate around 2.7 crore (people) and we need 5.4 crore doses".