The Odisha cabinet chaired by chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday decided to float global tender for purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.

At present, only Covaxin and Covishield are available in the state. But there is a huge shortage of these two vaccines due to short supply and long queues of people are noticed in different vaccine centres to get the jab.

Chief secretary Suresh Chandra Mohapatra told reporters, “Only vaccination can protect the people of the state. We will vaccinate all the people. We will go for global tender to bring vaccines from different companies located across the globe.

“The health and family welfare department has been empowered to do this. A technical committee will be constituted to this effect which will study the details and take the required steps.”

Mohapatra said: “The state will urge the Centre to exempt taxes from the vaccines and Covid medicines. It will also urge the Centre to share the cess, surcharge collected from various products with the state so that the state’s economic burden will be lessened.”

He said: “The state is spending a lot of money for the treatment of Covid patients and vaccination programmes.”

The state government also announced that all the staff engaged in Covid duty during this period if fall sick, the period of treatment and isolation period will be treated as duty period.