Centre to 'facilitate' global vaccine procurement for states

New Delhi: As the efforts of the states governments of Punjab and Delhi to directly purchase vaccine from manufacturers have failed after Modern and Pfizer declined to send doses directly to any state or private party, the Centre has 'assured' the states in facilitating the vaccines supply by directly coordinating with global manufacturers.

In reply to a query raised at the COVID-19 press briefing of the Health Ministry, joint secretary Lav Agarwal said, "The Centre will be facilitating them (vaccine manufacturers) in terms of regulatory and procurement facilitation."

"In cases of Pfizer and Moderna, most of the time, their orders are full. It depends upon the surplus vaccine that they have and out of that how much they can supply to India," he said, adding that they will "come back" to the government of India and on that basis we will facilitate in providing vaccines to states in coordination with the states. Notably, Moderna has refused to send vaccines directly to the Punjab government citing the company policy which has it that it only deal with the government of India and not with any state government or private party.

Moderna and Pfizer have also turned down similar deals with the Delhi government. In both cases, vaccine manufacturers have made it very clear that they don't deal with state governments.

After taking a cue from outcome of global orders of Delhi and Punjab governments, Bihar government, which is ruled by BJP-JDU, has decided not to procure global vaccines directly.

"Seeing the outcome of global tenders floated by the other states, the state may not go for direct procurement of vaccine from global vaccine manufacturers," a senior health ministry official said, adding that Bihar has received 1.1 crore doses of the vaccine and 98 lakh people have been vaccinated till Sunday.

The Punjab government had approached Sputnik V, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson for the vaccine, but only Moderna responded refusing to supply the vaccine.

Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have also floated tenders, but the response to Punjab's attempts is taken as symbolic for all the states. Other states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana have also opted for global tenders.