Centre caps maximum monthly limit of vaccine stocks at private centres
Private hospitals have to place orders for vaccines on CoWin and cannot directly procure it from manufacturers, July 1 onwards.
FollowWith a lot of private hospitals outnumbering their state-run counterparts, the Centre has devised a formula for maximum monthly limit of stocks at private vaccination centres.
According to an exclusive report by Times of India, the government has said that private vaccination centres cannot directly procure jabs from manufacturers starting July 1.
Private hospitals have to place orders for vaccines on CoWin and cannot directly procure it from manufacturers, July 1 onwards. The Centre has also devised a formula to decide the 'maximum monthly limit' of stocks that a private vaccination centre can purchase to ensure a level-playing field.
According to an SOP document circulated among Mumbai hospitals on Tuesday, the maximum vaccine stock a private hospital can procure is double their average daily consumption for a particular week in the previous month. Hospitals can pick a week of their choice to derive the daily average and place orders. The details will be taken from the CoWin site.
For instance, if a hospital submits the order for July by selecting the June 10-16 week when 630 doses were given, then daily average would be 90 (630/7=90). The hospital, therefore, can place a maximum order of 5,400 doses (90x30x2=5,400). The monthly limit can be revised in the second half, based on consumption in the first 15 days.
For hospitals that plan to join the inoculation drive now and do not have a prior use record, maximum limit will be based on number of hospital beds. A 50-bed hospital can order a maximum of 3,000 doses, a 50-300 bed hospital can order up to 6,000 doses and a hospital with more than 300 beds can order up to 10,000 doses.
A marked increase in the pace of Covid-19 vaccination has been observed from June 21 with around 4.61 crore doses being administered in eight days, which is more than the population of Iraq (4.02 crore), Canada (3.77 crore), Saudi Arabia (3.48 crore) and Malaysia (3.23 crore), the government said on Tuesday. On an average, 57.68 lakh doses of the vaccine were administered per day which is more than the population of Finland (55.41 lakh), Norway (54.21 lakh) and New Zealand (48.22 lakh), Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said addressing a press conference.
The new revised guidelines of Covid-19 vaccination came into effect from June 21, according to which the Centre will now procure 75% of the vaccines being produced by the manufacturers in the country.
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 new guidelines stated. Agarwal informed that 49% of the population aged 60 years and above has been vaccinated with the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine. The government highlighted that the cumulative vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed 33.11 crore so far.
Out of an estimated 59.7 crore people in the age group of 18-44 years, 15% have been vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine, it said. Agarwal said from June 21-28, 57.68 lakh average daily doses have been delivered.
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