Nitish urges Centre to provide fresh COVID vaccine stocks

Patna, April 07 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday urged the Centre to provide fresh stocks of COVID vaccine vials so that administering of jabs, which is currently on hold, could be resumed.

Talking to reporters here on the sidelines of a function, he also asserted that his government was “alert” in view of rising incidence of COVID cases in some parts of the country, though Bihar was not one of them.

“Our testing rate is much higher than the national average, which is six lakh tests per one million people. We are conducting eight lakh tests. Bihar accounts for about one fourth of the total number of tests conducted across the country”, claimed Kumar.

He underscored that the current spike was noticed in those parts of the country which were the worst affected when the coronavirus had caused a global pandemic.

“In Bihar cases are very few but we are alert, nonetheless. In places like hospitals wearing of masks is being reinforced. We were also carrying out vaccination till our supply dried up. We hope the Centre would do the needful soon”, added Kumar.

The JD(U) leader also took a veiled dig at his former ally BJP when he was asked about riots in some parts of the state during Ram Navami festivities.

“All the guilty would be exposed and brought to book. In 2018, we did not spare even the son of a Union minister”, said Kumar, referring to Ashwini Choubey’s son Arijit Shashwat who was arrested in connection with riots that had then erupted in Bhagalpur.