Amidst shortage of vaccines and decelerated vaccination drive, Punjab Government has decided to explore the possibilities of floating a global tender for the procurement of vaccines from all possible sources to ensure early inoculation in the State, besides reaching out directly to all vaccine manufacturers for direct purchase of various COVID-19 vaccines, including Sputnik V, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.
Announcing this, the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday directed the Health Department to explore all options.
Notably, Punjab has storage space for 35 lakh Sputnik V vaccines, which require storage temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius.
“All efforts would be made for procurement of vaccines to meet the acute shortage in the State, which has received fewer than 44 lakh vaccine doses so far from the Government of India, of which only one lakh is currently available for use and which will also be exhausted within a day,” said the Chief Minister.
The chief Minister noted that the State Government was forced to stop vaccination for Phase I and II categories in the last three days because of non-availability. He also directed all concerned departments to continue pursuing the matter of supply aggressively with the Centre. As per Centre’s allocation for Phase III (18-44 age group), the State Government has been able to buy only 3.6 lakh vaccine doses, including 63,000 received a day before. A total of 2.3 lakh have already been used, leaving only 1.3 lakh for use as of now, said the Chief Minister. Pointing out that almost one lakh unregistered construction workers and their family members had, so far, come forward for getting vaccinated in line with the State Government’s prioritization of vaccination for 18-44 category, the Chief Minister asked the Labour Department to ensure the registration of these workers on priority.
During the COVID review meeting, COVID Expert Group head Dr KK Talwar noted that the existing vaccines had been found to be effective against the new variants or mutants so far.