Telangana govt floats global tenders for one crore COVID vaccine doses
Telangana government on Wednesday floated global tenders for ten million (one crore) COVID vaccine doses to ramp up immunization drive in the state.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 19 May 2021 7:52 AM GMT
Hyderabad: Telangana government on Wednesday floated global tenders for ten million (one crore) COVID vaccine doses to ramp up immunization drive in the state. A short tender to purchase 10 million doses has been issued. The tender document will be uploaded on the website on May 21 and the last date for receiving the bids is June 4.
The successful bidder has to supply 10 million doses within a six months period from the issuance of `Letter of Intent'. The supplies should be not less than 1.5 million doses per month. The state government has decided to vaccinate all its four crore population.
Meanwhile, Hyderabad-based Biological E. will produce Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine alongside its own candidate in a bid to ramp up supplies in India. "The infrastructure and plants are completely separate for both the products and we will be producing both and these will be independent of each other," Mahima Datla, managing director of Biological E. told Reuters
She said Biological E. was looking to contract-manufacture about 600 million doses of the J&J vaccine annually. India's government, however, did not factor in any production of J&J this year in the country in a list of likely vaccine output released last week. J&J confirmed to Reuters that it was working with Biological E. on manufacturing its vaccine.
Last month J&J said that it had sought permission to conduct a local clinical trial in India for its single-dose vaccine. It has not given other details and a spokeswoman for J&J in India did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Biological E., based in Hyderabad, also plans to produce 75 to 80 million doses of its own vaccine a month from August. The drug has been developed with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Dynavax Technologies Corp.
In March, the US said it would finance Biological E.'s efforts to produce at least 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine by the end of 2022. Reuters reported on Tuesday that India was unlikely to resume major exports of Covid-19 vaccines until at least October as it diverts shots for domestic use, a longer-than-expected delay set to worsen supply shortages from the global COVAX initiative.
