Private hospitals struggle with drastic fall in Covid immunisation

Within a month of the introduction of the new Covid-19 vaccination policy, daily inoculation numbers have fallen sharply at the country’s private hospitals, which attribute the decline to bottlenecks in the process of procuring vaccines and their pricing.
Private hospitals participating the the country's coronavirus vaccination drive have recorded a 30-50% fall in people coming in for the shots since the government put a new vaccine policy in place on June 21 this year.

“We have been vaccinating at our hospitals with all three vaccines and have almost exhausted stocks. There is lack of availability of fresh stocks and a complex process of procurement has to be followed,” a spokesperson for Fortis Healthcare told ET. “In several states, there is still no clarity on how we can procure and what the timelines for delivery are.”

As per the new policy, private hospitals must procure their Covid-19 vaccine doses through a centralised portal. They need to put in a request on the portal and pay in advance, after which an approval comes from the vaccine manufacturers. No supply date is shared with the hospitals.

“Under the earlier system in May, we used to send an email to the vaccine manufacturers with our requirements and make the payment. They would indicate the number of vaccines that would be made available on a certain date,” said a senior executive of a private hospital chain, requesting not to be named. “This system has been disbanded and now we do not know when vaccines will arrive. So we cannot plan our sessions.”

The private hospitals say the publicity given to free government vaccines and the prohibitively priced vaccines at their facilities are the reasons for the reduction in footfalls.

Harsh Mahajan, NATHEALTH president, said, “While bottlenecks in procurement of vaccines by private hospitals may be one of the factors responsible for slow pace of vaccination in private sector, a major factor appears to be the price of the vaccine, which is Rs 780 for Covishield and Rs 1,410 for Covaxin, as compared with Rs 250 for either, which the government had fixed earlier. Consequently, most private centres which have vaccine stocks available are getting only few people. It would appear that people are willing to wait for a free jab in the government vaccination centres.”

The Centre had flagged the drop in number of vaccinations carried out at private hospitals at a meeting with state governments on Wednesday.