Covid-19 vaccine doses provided free of cost by the Centre will now be allocated to states and union territories based on criteria like population, disease burden and the progress of vaccination, the government said in its revised guidelines on Tuesday. It further warned that wastage of shots will affect the allocation negatively.
This comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the central government will provide free vaccines against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) to all adults across all states from June 21.
There has been a rift between Centre and some of the states over vaccine wastage. A health ministry data in May mentioned the amount of wastage of vials by each state — Jharkhand (nearly 37%), Chhattisgarh (30%), Tamil Nadu (15.5%), Jammu and Kashmir (10.8%) and Madhya Pradesh (10.7%). It said that these states are reporting much higher wastage than the national average (6.3%), leading Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren to dub the data as “laughable”.
Details of the New Guidelines:
• Within the population group of citizens more than 18 years of age, states/UTs may decide their own prioritization factoring in the vaccine supply schedule. Several states had been demanding this leverage of being given an option to decide priority group within the eligibility age groups.
• In order to incentivise production by vaccine manufacturers and encourage new vaccines, domestic vaccine manufacturers are given the option to also provide vaccines directly to private hospitals. This would be restricted to 25% of their monthly production.
• The price of vaccine doses for private hospitals would be declared by each vaccine manufacturer, and any subsequent changes would be notified in advance. The private hospitals may charge up to a maximum of Rupees 150 per dose as service charges. State governments may monitor the price being so charged.
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