BMC abandons plan to buy Sputnik V Vaccine for the city

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has eventually dumped its plan to buy the Sputnik V vaccines for the city of Mumbai. After declining all offers for its global Expression of Interest (EOI) and closing it in June without any success, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) went to Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories to buy Sputnik V vaccines on an experimental basis.

 

But after the company failed to commit enough doses within the specific timeline the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) dumped the idea. The plan of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was to acquire one crore vaccine doses, but all nine proposals were rejected due to the company’s failure in submitting all the required documents, mainly the document requires to establish any direct connection with the manufacturers, stated an official. 

 

“Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories accepted the offer and were going to supply the stock of required Sputnik vaccines on an experimental basis by the end of June. But they were not sure about the number of doses they were going to give still the company wanted to charge the BMC for supplying the vaccines on an experimental basis. We could not find any clarity in the timeline so that is the reason we had to call off this plan,” stated P Velrasu the Additional Municipal Commissioner.

 

“And also the Centre has now changed the vaccine policy with the supply enough now there seems to be no need for buying vaccines from Dr. Reddy,” Velrasu further added. The storage facility which is required for Sputnik is different from that of the Covaxin and Covishield vaccines so this is the reason why the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) came up with this idea of a small number of doses on an experimental basis, and scale it up later, stated BMC official. 

 

 

In a statement in June, the Russian Development Investment Fund and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories declared that they had sole distribution rights for the first 250 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine in India “We would not like to comment on this matter now,” stated Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories.