Andhra Pradesh first state to invite global tenders for vaccine

Vijayawada: In a swift move, the state government has invited global tenders for the supply of Corona vaccine to meet the huge demand in the state.

Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy conducted a review meeting on the Covid-19 situation and Corona vaccination, at the CM camp office at Tadepalli on Thursday. The officials informed that bidders have to file tenders by June 3 and there is a possibility of pre-bid meeting being held on May 20-22 in this regard. They pointed out that AP is the first state to call for global tenders.

The Chief Minister instructed the authorities to focus on setting up a dedicated oxygen plant with at least 300 tonne capacity either in Krishnapatnam or Kadapa, as the current consumption already exceeded 600 tonnes a day and to avoid oxygen shortages in near future. The officials informed that the oxygen allocations from the Centre were increased to 590 tonnes from 360 tonnes, but the consumption crossed 600 tonnes and to bridge the deficit, eight cryogenic storage tanks were sent to different districts.

The Chief Minister said that all measures should be taken to ensure that oxygen reaches hospitals with proper pressure and asked the officials to use the services of Naval and other technical personnel. The Navy is already inspecting pipelines in hospitals and making necessary changes, as well as improving the pipeline system.

When the CM ordered arrangement of 15,000 oxygen concentrators, 10,000 D-type cylinders in all Covid hospitals and to provide more facilities to the patients, the officials said that an additional 250 ventilators were being installed, of which 50 had already been supplied to the hospitals. They said that policies for constructing 125 kilo liters mega storage tank were being finalised, which would be installed at the proposed oxygen manufacturing plants, besides establishing 53 PSA oxygen plants across the state and laying 6,500 new medical and gas pipelines.

Further, the authorities said that the number of oxygen tankers was increased to 78 from the existing 56 and they arranged 14 other vehicles to refill and deliver the tanker as soon as it arrived. As of now, 36 vehicles were being used to transport 210 metric tonnes of oxygen per day from various factories in Odisha, where four vehicles were being airlifted daily from Vijayawada to Bhubaneswar by Air Force aircraft. The officials said that two ISO tankers were coming to the state after getting filled with oxygen from Durgapur and another 25 tankers are due by the middle of June.

The officials said that German hanger tents were being set up at select hospitals. Each can accommodate 25-50 beds based on the available area. The authorities informed the Chief Minister that there are 47,693 beds at 669 Covid hospitals, of which 39,749 beds are occupied. 26,030 people are being treated under Aarogyasri Scheme. There are 6,513 ICU beds, 23,357 non-ICU oxygen beds and 17,823 non-ICU oxygen beds with a total of 3,460 ventilators.

As far as availability of essentials are concerned, there are 6,42,911 N-95 masks and 7,18,086 PPE kits and 3,826 surgical masks across the state. In regard to recruitment, a total of 17,901 posts were filled up, including technicians, data entry operators, MNOs and FNOs.

Similarly, in regard to vaccination, 75,49,960 Covid vaccine doses were received so far from the centre, and of them 62,60,400 were Covishield and 12,89,560 were Covaxin doses.

Deputy Chief Minister Alla Krishna Srinivas, Chief Secretary Adityanath Das, DGP Gautam Sawang, Covid command control chairman Dr K.S. Jawahar Reddy, Health Principal Secretary Anil Kumar Singhal, Covid task force committee chairman M.T. Krishna Babu, Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar, Health Secretary M. Ravi Chandra, 104 call centre in-charge A Babu, Aarogyasri CEO Dr Mallikarjuna, APMSIDC VC and MD Vijayarama Raju and other officials were present.