Amid the runaround for the Remdesivir, the drug with whose demand social media timelines, these days, are full, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that there is enough production of the drug but many people and hoarders are buying it in bulk and this has led to its shortage.
“The production of Remdisivir is adequate. We have banned export as precautionary but in panic, people are buying in bulk which is leading to a shortage,” said Amit Shah. “I appeal to the people to buy it when only the doctor prescribes,” he added.
Whenever the production of a good is enough but still there is a shortage, it means that either black marketeers and hoarders are trying to make excessive profit from the good, or some morally bankrupt rich people have bought the good unnecessarily for emergency use, which is exactly happening in the case of the so-called shortage of Remdesivir.
Recently, two men named Siddharth Yadav (21) and Rizwan Mansuri (32), a doctor were reportedly arrested a little after 7.30 pm on Tuesday this week for trying to black-market the drug. The Malwani police had received a hint that a few individuals were hoarding the Remdesivir injections from chemist shops and selling them at a markup price to people desperate for the anti-viral drug.
According to a Hindustan Times report, Shekhar Bhalerao, senior police inspector of Malwani police station, said that the two were questioned about their source for the Remdesivir injections. The two men allegedly told the police that a medical representative named Chiranjiv Vishwakarma had arranged for the injections and was expected to meet them soon to pick up the money from their sale. Vishwakarma showed up and was also arrested.
Meanwhile, the Pune Police also arrested five men and recovered four vials of the Remdesivir injection used for Covid-19 treatment and currently in short supply. The four arrested men have been identified as Mohammad Mehboob Pathan (28), Imtiaz Yusuf Ajmeri (52), Parvez Mounoddin Shaikh (36), and Ashwini Vijay Solanki (41). A raid was carried out by the officials of Unit 4 of the Pune Police Crime Branch on Wednesday which recovered the vials of Remdesivir injections.
The hoarding and black marketing of Remdesivir are rampant in the cities of Maharashtra – Mumbai and Pune, thanks to an ignorant Uddhav Thackeray government and its failure to come up with a proper mechanism for its purchase and distribution.
Instead of owning its shortcomings, leaders in the MVA government have resorted to playing the time-consuming blame game. While Remdesivir injections are in short supply, the state with the highest caseload is suffering from a lack of hospital beds as the entire sector has been put under tremendous stress and is reportedly on the verge of collapsing.
While the Maharashtra government took its sweet time in arresting the black marketers, one reckons it is just the tip of the iceberg as hundreds of such men and groups have been operating in broad daylight to siphon the medicine. Hopefully, the MVA government rounds up every single one of them, instead of arresting a few for the media optics.
Moreover, the governments in other states also need to keep a close eye on the hoarders of Remdesivir because thousands of lives could be put at risk due to their illegal activities.