India: vaccine shortage in Maharashtra, the state most affected by Covid

A woman is injected with the AstraZeneca vaccine against the Covid.

April 9, 2021. AFP - PUNIT PARANJPE

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2 min

India has experienced its worst wave of contamination in recent days since the start of the pandemic with more than 130,000 cases recorded as of Thursday, April 8, for around 120 deaths.

Suddenly, the authorities accelerated the vaccination campaign, administered to more than 4 million people per day.

But it is now production that does not follow, and several vaccination centers have had to close for lack of vaccines.

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With our correspondent in India,

Sébastien Farcis

It is the state of Maharastra that is sounding the alarm.

This region of more than 120 million inhabitants is the hardest hit by this

wave of Covid-19 contaminations

, and the authorities are therefore vaccinating there

with a vengeance

: 400,000 doses are administered every day, a record in the country.

But the regional authorities are running out of doses now, and dozens of centers have had to close there since Thursday.

The federal government wants to reassure: it has 24 million doses, two million of which must be sent to Maharashtra.

This shows, however, that even India,

the world's second-largest producer of

Covid vaccines, may run out of vaccines.

The country's largest manufacturer also warned that it was not tenable to continue to vaccinate 4 million people per day.

So far, 94 million doses of the anti-Covid vaccine have been administered in the country, for a population of 1.3 billion.

To read also: Covid-19 in India: dazzling return of the virus, a curfew decreed in several cities

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