State govt may scrap tendering process to get vaccine doses

With the supply of vaccine doses back with the Centre, the Maharashtra government is set to stop its plan to buy vaccines from manufacturers for the 18 to 45 age group

With the supply of vaccine doses back with the Centre, the Maharashtra government is set to stop its plan to buy vaccines from manufacturers for the 18 to 45 age group. The state will also scrap the tendering process to get vaccine doses from manufacturers which had not materialised.

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On Monday, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi announced that the Union government is again centralising the vaccine procurement and the Centre will supply free vaccines for the 18-45 age category. Senior officials informally said that the announcement by PM Modi has taken the load off of the government.

“The [tendering] process was not moving forward as the bidders weren’t able to provide any connection between them and the [vaccine] manufacturers. It will be formally scrapped after a discussion with the health minister and senior bureaucrats,” said official requesting anonymity. The matter could be discussed in the state cabinet meeting scheduled to be held on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the state is awaiting the revised guidelines from the Centre. “Though the announcement has happened, so far we have not got the guidelines. We expect it in a few days. Till then our vaccination drive will go on as it is,” said DN Patil, state immunisation officer. Maharashtra could go past another landmark by surpassing the 25 million mark on Wednesday. So far, the state has administered 24,725,242 doses.

About five months into the vaccination programme, nearly 22% of the state’s 91,435,000 eligible population has been covered with the first dose, while 5.30% have taken two doses.

As per the data on the Co-Win portal, Maharashtra has administered 19,792,475 first doses till 8pm on June 8.

“We have been at the top in the country for a long time. In a day or two, we will go past 2.5 crore (25 million) doses of which nearly two crore (20 million) are first doses. The pace is good and we want to cover maximum population in the first dose,” said Patil.

Even though the Maharashtra government has suspended the inoculation of the 18-45 age category since May 13, the inoculation in the category has seen nearly a three-fold jump.

On May 13, the number of doses administered in the category was 634,570, which reached 1,804,173 on June 7, as per the state health department’s data.

Health department officials said that the drive for the category was going on at the private hospitals and through the drives taken up by corporates, which tied up with private hospitals to give shots to their employees.

As of June 7, 51,459 beneficiaries in the 18-45 age category are fully vaccinated. Patil said that around 3.15% of the eligible population in the 18-45 age bracket have been administered doses.