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Govt. reserves 2 m Pfizer doses

29 Jan 2021

  • Vaccines to be purchased, not donated

  • Not through World Bank COVAX facility

  • Additional cold storage to be developed

  By Hiranyada Dewasiri   The Government has reserved two million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine which are to be purchased soon, The Morning learnt. Speaking to The Morning yesterday (28), Secretary to the State Ministry of Primary Healthcare, Epidemics, and Covid Disease Control Dr. Amal Harsha De Silva said the reservation was made by the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation (SPC). “The SPC has reserved about two million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to be purchased and received soon.” SPC is the sole supplier of pharmaceuticals, surgical consumable Items, laboratory chemicals, and equipment to all institutions administered by the Health Ministry. Dr. De Silva also said the Pfizer vaccine will also be included in the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) COVAX facility that Sri Lanka will receive for 20% of its population. “We don’t know what vaccines we are to receive exactly, but Pfizer will be included in what we receive through the COVAX facility.” As the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at a temperature of -70° Celsius, Dr. De Silva, when inquired about the necessary storage facilities, said that Sri Lanka currently has about 35 to 40 state and private facilities to store vaccines at this temperature. SPC is to additionally prepare two containers to store Pfizer vaccines. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed by BioNTech, a German biotechnology company, in co-operation with Pfizer, an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The price of a single dose of the vaccine was reported to be $ 20 last November. The vaccine is effective against Covid-19 mutations in variants that have emerged recently in Britain and South Africa, the two firms claimed yesterday (28). In a statement, the two companies said that early tests suggest their immunisation would be similarly protective against the variant in South Africa. It said that preliminary findings “do not indicate the need for a new vaccine to address the emerging variants”. Earlier this week, a new variant of Covid-19 was reported in Sri Lanka. The Department of Immunology and Molecular Medicine of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura stated that this new variant of Covid-19 bears similarities to the variants of Covid-19 that has spread in European countries such as Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Germany, and the UK.


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