Moderna’s rejection comes at a time when Punjab is facing an acute shortage of doses and had to halt vaccinations for the last 2-3 days. To overcome the shortage, it was exploring the option of direct procurement of vaccines from manufacturers.
American pharmaceutical firm Moderna Inc on Sunday turned down Punjab’s request for vaccines. It said that according to its official policy, the company will deal only with the Central government. The Amarinder Singh government had reached out to all such manufacturers looking for direct purchases, officials said.
The Punjab state government recently reached out to all top vaccine makers, including Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, and the producers of Russia’s Sputnik V for the direct supply of doses to the state.
“One of a Covid vaccine manufacturer Moderna has refused to send direct vaccination to Punjab government as according to their policy, they only deal with Government of India and not with any state government or private parties,” said a statement issued by Punjab’s Information and Public Relations Department, as reported by Moneycontrol
Moderna’s rejection comes at a time when Punjab is facing an acute shortage of doses and had to halt vaccinations for the last 2-3 days. To overcome the shortage, it was exploring the option of direct procurement of vaccines from manufacturers.
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The state has been able to buy only 4.2 lakh vaccine doses, including 66,000 received yesterday, under the Centre’s Phase III (18-44 age group) allocation. Up to 3.65 lakh of these have already been used up, leaving only 64,000 now, state nodal officer for vaccination, Vikas Garg, said.
“All efforts would be made for procurement of vaccines to meet the acute shortage in the state, which had received fewer than 44 lakh vaccine doses so far from the Government of India,” he said.
Punjab reported nearly 5,300 fresh Covid cases yesterday, taking its overall number of infections to date to 5.34 lakh. It also reported 201 deaths, putting the state’s overall fatalities at over 13,000.
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