Within hours of Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy writing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting that unutilised vaccines allotted to private hospitals under 25 per cent quota be diverted to government channels, the central cabinet on Wednesday took a decision accepting his suggestion.
The cabinet under the leadership of Narendra Modi decided that the private hospitals would have to apply through Cowin portal about their requirement, instead of a lump sum quota of 25 per cent.
As such, the private hospitals cannot purchase the vaccines directly from the manufacturers and stock them. They should apply to the Centre through the portal and place the order as per their demand.
The Cabinet also fixed a quota on vaccine supply to the private hospitals, which would be decided based on the vaccinations done by them till now. This was done to avoid wastage of vaccines. The new rules will come into effect from Thursday.
On Tuesday, Jagan wrote a letter to Modi pointing out that the private hospitals were not able to completely utilise the 25 per cent quota in the vaccines allotted to them under the Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated NationalCovid-19 Vaccination Strategy being implemented with effect from May 1.
“I would like to bring to your kind notice that so far only 2,67,075 people have been vaccinated at private hospitals within the State of Andhra Pradesh. It may also be noted that 17,71,580 doses have been earmarked for. private hospitals for the month of July. The past experience and the demand for vaccine at private hospitals in Andhra Pradesh clearly indicates that such huge quantities of vaccine cannot be utilized by the private hospitals,” he said.
He suggested that the vaccine stocks not lifted by the private hospitals should be procured and supplied for implementation of vaccination drive through the government channels.
“Such an approach would go a long way in speeding up the vaccination drive and enabling effective utilization of the available resources to achieve complete vaccine coverage at earliest,” he added.
