 As India grapples with the second wave of COVID-19, along with the shortage of oxygen supply and vaccines, the country is also staring at a deficit of remdesivir. With remdesivir emerging as a crucial medicine for a major chunk of severely affected patients, the surge in cases has led to a rise in demand for this medicine. Following the rising demand, the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation established a centre at the Government Keel Park Medical College KMC in Chennai for selling the medicine. Even though the centre was established with the purpose of serving everyone and to tackle the shortage of supply, people are being forced to wait in long queues to get their medicine. This has become a common scene in the recent past. Newsclick met with a few of the people who have suffered this ordeal. Because this is the only place where there is a COVID injection to all the people. I think the time will not be coming here. That is not a good one. I want to distribute the Tamil Nadu hospital so that the people will not come from outside. Even city people will not come. I am residing from Chippuden. The Omondora Hospital is very near to my house. It is just one kilometre. Rakuta is about two kilometres. So if you dump those items in the hospital, people will easily go there and buy. My wife went inside two hours back. While buying the medicine, she is refusing. Your daughter's name is not mentioned in the description. It is misrepresented by the hospital. Not these people or myself or my family members. Those people have to realise that I am here today. Already last year also I had a corona problem. I was affected by it. For three years they can give a separate shelter. That is my special advice. I am waiting here for 10 o'clock here to get everybody's medicine. It is a very long queue. It is two and a half kilometres early. So two thousand people are waiting here. It should be avoided keeping up to three more locations to help the people. On the other side, people are also waiting with me. That is not acceptable. People can open shelters in different places. I request the government to do that immediately. But it is advisable to open a shelter. It is definitely required. Because struggling here is very hot sir. I am not used to it for such a meeting. I find it difficult here. This is the third day I am waiting. First day I come on Monday. So Monday evening I came but I didn't get it. Again I came on Tuesday. I didn't get it. Wednesday I came and I didn't get it. First day is my fourth day I am coming here. Hopefully I should get this guy. There is lot of fraud and there was no proper management. That is the best number of mental health. Newsclick also spoke with public health activist Dr Shanti about the relevance of Remdesivir and the current crisis. Actually these kind of patients standing in the queues for long time passed together in our place in a crowded manner is not advisable. That itself will become a microcluster for the spreading of the corona and it should have been prevented. To some extent if I say that it is a welcoming act, this kind of queues and this kind of selling Remdesivir is also not needed. Because only there are two kind of set up in our country when giving treatment. One is a government set up and another one is a private set up. In government set up government doctors are going to use through their own mechanism. So in a private hospitals it is obvious that the home quarantined patients are not going to get injection Remdesivir. Like that hospitals with the capacity to give oxygen, private hospitals with the capacity to give oxygen with the capacity to admit COVID patients are only going to use injection Remdesivir. So the same mechanism getting the patients name Aadhar card and CT chest report. All those things can be obtained from the private hospital itself and the drug can be given directly to the private hospitals. So that there is no need for these kind of long queue and keeping those kind of queues in those kind of selling places sent us in a different parts of Tamil Nadu. Why means if private hospitals in the Nukand Kannada of Tamil Nadu is able to procure this injection from a government for a needy patients after submitting the details of the patient that itself is going to solve the problem. It is not advisable to give the prescription to the patient's attendant and ask them to get it from somewhere or from government portal or a private portal and that itself is creating a problem. That is the root cause for this black market. It should have been avoided and it should have been dealt in a better manner. Something is better than nothing so this is okay but this is not very advisable. This is not very useful in a long run because it just wasted time. The very purpose of giving injection Remdesivir it should be given in a early period. But when the patients are coming from Dinnalveli, patients are coming from far off place again taking the drug and going again means it is just going to take few days and it is of no use. The second wave of Corona is coming in a very steep manner and it is the second wave will come it is expected only but the speed which it is coming it is too high and that is unexpected only. And second thing what we should not do that we have done like Kumbh Mela and election rallies all those things that has aggravated the steep of the second wave many fold. So that is one reason in the second wave there is a lot of difference between the first wave and the second wave in the way in which the virus works. So in the first wave many were asymptomatic if 100 patients are getting infected in the first wave 85 were asymptomatic and remaining 15 many were mild symptomatic and only around 5% were very symptomatic and very severe and got admitted and in that around 2% only was in the ICU. The numbers are problem in the experience in the first wave but when coming to the second wave it is not like that. Here exactly the government has not come out yet with the asymptomatic rate and all but we obviously we see many patients are becoming positive, positive patients are becoming symptomatic and they require oxygen more and they are staying in the hospital is more and that is why the need for remdesivir is increasing. So actually the remdesivir is not given for all patients it is only given for selected patients. The patients who are at home who are in home quarantine they are not given remdesivir. Patients who are not having any symptom not requiring any oxygen they are not being given remdesivir. Only patients aged obesity people having with diabetes hypertension kidney problem undergoing dialysis all those high risk patients are only given this injection remdesivir. And that too it should be given in a earlier period. Actually remdesivir is an antiviral drug it kills virus the coronavirus and so it should be given in the initial stage within 10 days from the onset of the symptom. In that period only the virus is getting multiplied in the patient's body and so only if you give remdesivir in that phase it will be of use. It is of use only in reducing the duration of staying in the hospital and it is the conversion of moderate patient into severe COVID patient is getting reduced and the death is to some extent it is reduced. But no doctor is telling that it is 100% very useful in all the 100% of cases in all kind of way. It is useful in a selective patients if it is used in an earlier stage and that is the advantage of the drug because of the sudden eyes of cases in the second wave and the need for ASM more in the number of cases of the symptomatic patients the need for injection remdesivir is more. And on the other hand the production was not done proportionately to that extent and that is the problem. And the first wave we had only 7 manufacturers who were producing injection remdesivir and government is not at all interested in producing injection remdesivir through public sector companies. So it is totally dependent on the private sector companies so around 38 lakhs per month was produced and simultaneously export of the injection remdesivir was also going on. And suddenly because of the sudden increase of cases from the month of April because this problem of shortage of remdesivir has come which could have been easily prevented by increasing the production of the remdesivir especially through the public sector company by giving compulsory license considering the pandemic period but the government literally failed in that and that is the reason for this black marketing holding all these things.