Andhra Pradesh: Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Friday reiterated his demand that the Centre should take back unused vaccine doses against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) from private hospitals and re-allot them to the state in order to ramp up the vaccination drive. Andhra Pradesh has so far inoculated 18,392,496 beneficiaries against the viral disease of which 14,395,900 have received the first dose and the remaining 3,996,596 have received both doses. Last month, the state had set a record of administering over 1.37 million doses in a single day on June 20.

Reddy, who was a part of the Covid-19 review meeting with Prime Minister NarendraModi on Friday, said that out of the total 1,771,580 vaccine doses given to private hospitals, only 420,209 were used in June.

“In reality, the private hospitals are not vaccinating fully to their capacity. Whatever these people are earmarked and whatever they are not able to proceed with, if that quota (of vaccines) is re-allotted to the state government, it would help us in doing a better job,” Reddy told PM Modi, according to news agency PTI.