The way forward gulftoday.ae - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gulftoday.ae Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Read more about I didn t destroy India s self-sufficiency in vaccine production: Ramadoss on Business Standard. The Union health minister in the first term of the UPA government, Anbumani Ramadoss clarifies he did not close down govt-run vaccine manufacturing units
Injecting urgency
×
Centre has to think out-of-the-box to increase vaccine supplies. Global tenders by States may not work
Over the last one week, several States have put out global tenders for vaccine supplies with Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh being the trail blazers. On Tuesday, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai had to extend the deadline for the tender it put out on May 12 by another week due to lack of response. This is not surprising and should have been evident even before the tender was floated. The simple fact is that there is no spare vaccine capacity available with any of the producers across the world. The capacities of Pfizer and Moderna have been booked for the coming several months by the Western nations while Russia which produces the Sputnik is facing constraints in its own production which is why it has tied up with a laundry list of Indian pharma companies to produce the vaccine. With China being kept out of the tender by some of these States, there