Bhubaneswar: After several states, Odisha is now facing a shortage of Remdesivir injection used in the treatment for COVID-19.
Admitting the scarcity in the stocks of the essential medicine, Drugs Controller Annada Sankar Das on Tuesday said that the Centre has now brought the distribution of the essential drug under its control. Accordingly, the Centre is providing anti-viral drug Remdesivir to States.
While the State Drugs Controller supplies Remdesivir to private hospitals, Odisha State Medical Corporation supplies the essential drug to government hospitals across the State.
“Odisha will be allocated 21,000 vials of Remdesivir for a period between April 21 and April 30. The requirement was nearly 2,000 vials yesterday, but the State received only 92 vials. We have got information that even fewer vials are reaching today, but we have no information about the exact quantity.
“We are writing to the government of India to provide more stocks of Remdesivir,” said Das.
The Drugs Controller further said that there are no reports of shortage of Fabiflu medicine and it is being sold at 1120 identified medicine stores in the State.
Public Health Director, Niranjan Mishra, on the other hand, said, “The State government has adequate stock of Remdesivir injection. However, there is an artificial scarcity as people are now stockpiling the drug which is not a ‘Ramban’.”
According to Mishra, there will be Covid-19 peak by May second week in the country. However, the Covid graph seems to be on plateauing stage in Odisha as the daily cases is ranging between 6,000 to 6,500 cases per day for the last few days.
There is no shortage of testing kits and as people are now voluntarily coming forward for tests there might be some issues at the local level, said Mishra.
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(Edited By Suryakant Jena)