Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said he has appealed to the Central government that Covid-19 vaccination should be provided free of cost to all, adding the Delhi government would do it if Centre does not.
“I request everyone to not spread misinformation about Covid vaccine. I had appealed to Central government that Covid vaccination should be provided free of cost to all. If Centre does not do it and a need arises, the vaccine will be provided for free to people of Delhi,” Kejriwal said.
Kejriwal was on a visit to the family of Dr Hitesh Gupta who lost his life in the line of Covid-19 duty.
“We had started a scheme to encourage corona warriors and under it, I have come to provide help of ₹1 cr to the family. His wife is educated and we will recruit her in Delhi government,” he said.
India’s tally of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) rose to 10,495,147 on Wednesday after the Union health ministry reported that the country had logged a total of 15,968 new infections in the preceding 24 hours. 17,817 new recoveries took the total number of recovered cases to 10,129,111, the ministry’s dashboard showed.
There were 202 new deaths in the last 24 hours, the dashboard showed, taking the death toll to 151,529. Active cases, meanwhile, slumped by 2,051 and are at 214,507, as per the data. Recovered cases, active cases and deaths contribute 96.49%, 2.07% and 1.44% respectively of the country’s total cases.
This comes at a time when pan-India vaccination delivery is taking place, with the world’s largest immunisation drive scheduled to begin on January 16.
On Tuesday, day one of the vaccine delivery, a total of 5.65 million vaccine doses were transported from Pune to various cities in the country, including Delhi. In his virtual interaction with chief ministers of Monday, prime minister Narendra Modi had said a total of 30 million frontline workers would be vaccinated first, with total 300 million citizens to be vaccinated in the next few months.
