Nitin Gadkari enters Maharashtra's COVID-19 battle; attends VC with CM Uddhav's cabinet

Even as the demand for Remdesivir continued to reverberate in Maharashtra amid the second wave of COVID-19, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday informed that he had held talks with Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and state health minister Rajesh Tope over the availability of the drug related to the COVID-19 treatment in the state.

With the state posting a recovery rate of about 80% as per Rajesh Tope, the demand for the Remdesivir injection has significantly declined in the state as the number of COVID cases reported has also seen a slight decrease over the past week. Nagpur Lok Sabha MP Nitin Gadkari held talks with Maharashtra CM and the state's health minister to ensure the supply of Remdesivir injections throughout the state and noted that it would reduce black marketing of the drug. The Union Minister for Transport, Roads & Highways said that special wards to attend to children were being prepared ahead of the third wave of COVID. 

Gadkari and the members of the Maharashtra cabinet were attending the virtual inauguration of an Oxygen production plant of Darashiv Sugar Cooperative in Osmanabad district - the first sugar cooperative in the state to begin oxygen production.

Earlier in April, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had dialled Sun Pharma's chief to arrange for 10,000 injections of Remdesivir in Nagpur in view of a shortage of the medicine. A press release from Nitin Gadkari's office had said the Lok Sabha member from Nagpur had spoken to Sun Pharma's Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi over the phone to inform him about the situation and had appealed to him to make available the Remdesivir injections. The pharma company chief had reportedly assured Nitin Gadkari of making 5,000 injections available immediately and the remaining 5,000 in the next two-three days, the release had said.

Just a few days earlier, BJP MP Dr Subramanian Swamy had recommended to the Prime Minister to appoint Nitin Gadkari to lead India's COVID battle, though part of the reason for that was Swamy's own ongoing tiff with certain members of the PMO, as per his own admission. However, it is important to note that Nitin Gadkari has not been among the more vocal ministers amid the pandemic's second wave.

Maharashtra's COVID situation

Maharashtra reported 42,582 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a drop of nearly 4,200 infections from a day ago, while 850 more patients succumbed to the disease, the state health department said. With the addition of 42,582 COVID-19 cases, down from 46,781 on Wednesday, the state's caseload increased to 52,69,292, while the death toll reached 78,857, it said. On Tuesday, Maharashtra had reported 40,956 COVID-19 cases, 793 deaths and 71,966 recoveries.

Of the 850 fatalities, 409 had occurred in the past 48 hours, 160 last week and the rest 281 before the last week but were added to the toll on Thursday, the department said. Once again, recoveries outnumbered new cases. As many as 54,535 patients were discharged from hospitals during the day, taking the total recoveries to 46,54,731, the department said. Maharashtra now has 5,33,294 active cases. The state's COVID-19 recovery rate stood at 88.34 per cent, while the fatality rate was 1.50 per cent, it said.