Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday sought cooperation from his counterparts in other states to reach a consensus on procurement of Covid-19 vaccines at the central level in view of the challenges being faced by them in direct purchase from manufacturing companies.

Odisha had floated a global tender for procurement of vaccines from national and international companies but the response has been lukewarm with leading manufacturers not participating in the bid process.

In his letter to other chief ministers, Naveen stressed the need for central purchase of vaccines. He pointed out that there was a great demand from citizens for jabs after the Centre announced the third phase of its vaccination drive, which allowed inoculation of people above 18 years and opened procurement options to state governments and to private sectors.

“Many states have floated global tenders for vaccine procurement. However, it is quite clear that the global vaccine manufacturers are looking forward to the Union government for clearances and assurances. They are unwilling to get into supply contracts with the state governments, while the domestic vaccine manufacturers are having supply constraints and are not able to commit required supplies. Under the above circumstances, the best option available is for the Government of India to centrally procure the vaccines and distribute it among the states so that our citizens are vaccinated at the earliest,” said Naveen.

He added: “The only way to protect our people against future waves (of the pandemic) and provide them with a hope of survival is vaccination. Countries which have focused on vaccination programmes have seen remarkable improvement in their Covid situation. We have to provide this healing touch to our people.”

Underscoring the need to take up vaccination on a war footing, Naveen said: “No state is safe unless all the states adopt vaccination as the top priority and execute it on war footing. But, this cannot be a battle among the states to compete against each other to procure vaccines.”

Naveen also made it clear that the execution of the vaccination programme has to be centralised and states allowed the flexibility to determine their own mechanism to ensure universal vaccination. “Many hilly areas can not access the Internet and therefore online registration has to be flexible. Vulnerable tribes can be given priority by the states,” the chief minister said.

He said: “We have written to the Union government in this regard. However, I would respectfully suggest that all the state governments should come to a consensus on this issue for early resolution of this problem.”