The state government wants to procure Covid vaccines for private hospitals for the time being as several such units have expressed the fear that supply would suffer if they were to deal with the manufacturers directly as told by the Centre.
At a meeting with the state government on Tuesday, officials of several private hospitals said they had approached the vaccine manufacturers for clarity on how and when to place orders, but there was not much response.
The officials told government representatives that they were not sure whether the manufacturers could supply doses to all private hospitals separately.
The government told the hospitals that it would write to the Centre to know whether it can procure vaccines for private hospitals, said an official of a hospital who attended the meeting.
The Centre has announced that all private hospitals have to procure vaccines on their own from May 1, the day everyone above 18 becomes eligible for Covid jabs. In Bengal, however, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has said people above 18 will be given the shots from May 5.
Private hospitals are getting dozens of calls every day from people above 18 who want to book slots for vacci-nations, but the hospitals are not being able to give them any assurance.
“We have started approaching the manufacturers but we are not getting much response. We had a meeting with senior state government officials today. The government is writing to the Centre to know if it can... procure Covid vaccines on behalf of private healthcare facilities. But it will take a few more days for more clarity to emerge,” said Rupak Barua, the group CEO of AMRI Hospitals and the president of the Association of Hospitals of Eastern India.
“We, the private hospitals, can then procure the vaccines from the state government.”
A health department official said the government agreed to step in to ensure that those who had received the first dose did not miss the second.
“About one lakh first doses have been administered in hospitals in the metropolitan Calcutta. We will stand by private hospitals and the recipients so that the second doses can be administered in time. We will also mediate about procurement of vaccines for private hospitals from May as well as calibrate and channelise doses to hospitals,” said the official.
At the meeting, officials of private hospitals told the government that they would fail to administer the scheduled second doses if supply suffered from May.
A private hospital official said the vaccine manufacturers would give more im-portance to a state government’s request for doses than requests from individual hospitals.
“Officials representing the government asked for an estimated number of doses that private hospitals across the state will need. We said we would require about 1 crore doses. That is likely to see us through a couple of months. We are hoping that things will settle down by then and manufacturers will be in a position to supply us without fail,” the official said.
Earlier on Monday, the health department had officially communicated to all private hospitals that they would have to procure vaccines from manufacturers directly from May. But after the hospitals expressed their doubts about procuring vaccines on their own, government officials agreed to intervene.
“We are hoping the state will get a reply from the Centre in two to three days. We are waiting to see what the Centre says,” said an official of a private hospital.
According to an order from the Centre, the current arrangement of the state government supplying vaccine doses to private hospitals will end on April 30.
Private hospitals now pay Rs 150 a vial. Each vial contains 10 doses.
From May 1, the private hospitals have to shell out more.
The Serum Institute of India, which manufactures Covishield, has announced that private hospitals have to pay Rs 600 for each dose. Bharat Biotech, which produces Covaxin, has priced its vaccine at Rs 1,200 a dose for private hospitals.
All Covid vaccination centres are anticipating an increase in rush of recipients from May as the number of eligible beneficiaries will increase manifold.
Case count
The number of active Covid cases in Bengal crossed the 1-lakh mark on Tuesday and touched 1,00,615. The state recorded 16,403 new infections, 73 deaths and 10,664 recoveries during the day.