Commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Iqbal Singh Chahal said on Wednesday that the civic body had received a bid from vaccine manufacturer Pfizer. Now, the manufacturer has sent out a statement saying that no such bid was made.
“As stated earlier, during this pandemic phase, across the world, Pfizer is supplying its COVID-19 vaccine only to central governments and supra-national organizations for deployment in national immunization programs,” a Pfizer spokesperson said.
"Neither Pfizer Inc nor any of its affiliates globally, including in India, have authorized anyone to import/market/distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID 19 vaccine. We continue to have ongoing discussions with the Government of India towards making our vaccine available for use nationally,” it further read.
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The BMC Commissioner announced on Wednesday that Mumbai received eight bids for vaccines - one from Pfizer and seven from Sputnik V (Russia). “In response to MCGM's Global Expression of Interest for procurement of 1 crore vaccine doses, I wish to inform that 8 bids have been received till date. One bid is for Pfizer/Astra Zeneca and remaining 7 bids are for Sputnik,” Chahal said.
“The time period has been extended by one week to enable the various bidders to submit complete set of documents in support of the bids as prescribed under MCGM's Global Expression of Interest. Any additional bid shall also be entertained,” the Commissioner added.
BMC officials are expected to respond to Pfizer’s statement over the next few days.
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