Odisha Wants to Vaccinate +2 Students on Priority Basis, Seeks Flexibility in Distribution of Vaccines

Bhubaneswar: With experts suggesting vaccination is the main weapon to protect people from subsequent waves of the pandemic, Odisha is considering to vaccinate +2 students and their family members in the State on a priority basis.

State Health Minister Naba Kisore Das today wrote to Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan seeking permission for vaccination of +2 students and their family members in Odisha.
The Odisha Minister also demanded the Centre to give flexibility to design and decide on the distribution of vaccines taking local factors into consideration.

“In many hilly terrains, internet connectivity is poor and we can make online registration mandatory in those districts”, Das mentioned in the letter.

“States may be given the flexibility to design and decide on distribution of vaccines taking local factors into consideration (for eg. in many hilly terrains, internet connectivity is poor and we can’t make online registration mandatory in those districts; State would like to do priority vaccination for plus 2 students and their families and so on),” the Odisha Health Minister said.

“From the beginning, Odisha has been one of the most active States in vaccinating our people. We have meticulously planned our vaccination program and are among the States with lowest vaccine wastage. We have so far vaccinated 61,06,415 people with at least one dose. We have been vaccinating at a rate of More than 2 Lakh per day in early April. However, due to the vaccine supply constraints, currently we are able to vaccinate at 60,000-70,000 people per day even though we have the capacity to vaccinate at 3 Lakh people per day”, the letter reads.

Odisha floated a global tender for procurement of vaccines. However, there has been limited response to the tender as observed during the pre-bid stage. SII and Bharat Biotech have not participated in the pre-bid meeting. It is understood that, at their present capacity they won’t be able to provide vaccines in scale to states and there is an urgent need to scale up their capacities.

“There have been media reports that other states which floated tenders are also facing non-response from vaccine manufacturers. It seems that the global vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna are concerned about indemnity related issues among others. Secondly, they are willing to deal with federal-level central procurement only, at this stage. Global vaccine manufacturers will be requiring the Central Government statutory clearances for supplying to the states,” he said.

“Since the above are in the domain of the Union Government, it might be faster and economical if the procurement of global vaccines are made at the country-level rather by individual states. Our Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is committed to provide vaccines free-of-cost to our people and the state will bear the necessary cost of the vaccines,” Das said.