Many private hospitals that had stopped vaccinating people on April 30 are set to resume operations on Monday after they managed to procure stock directly from manufacturers. Hospital managements are offering the vaccine to anyone who is above the age of 18 who has registered on the CoWIN portal.
“We have a week’s worth of stock of Covishield and will resume vaccination from Monday. We will vaccinate anyone over 18 years of age, but appointments have to be booked on the CoWIN app,” said Vikram Sreeram, managing director of Mallige Hospital. A few hospitals are reserving 50% of the shots they administer every day to those aged above 45 and those who are due for their second dose. The rest will be kept aside for people in the 18-44 age group.
Until April 30, the State government was supplying vaccine doses to private hospitals. However, after the Centre announced that the vaccination drive would be open to people in the 18-44 age bracket, hospitals were instructed to make their own arrangements from May 1 and procure vaccines directly from manufacturers.
R. Ravindra, medical director, Suguna Hospital, said the hospital had resumed the vaccination drive last week itself. “We had asked for 10,000 doses of Covaxin, but were able to get 2,500 only. So we decided to only vaccinate 50 people a day. Although we have the capacity to vaccinate more people, we want to restrict it to 50 so that people who have taken the first dose at our hospital are able to get the second dose as well,” Dr. Ravindra said.
Prasanna H.M., president of the Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes’ Association (PHANA) and managing director of Pristine Hospital, said that they would also resume vaccination from Monday as they had managed to get 5,000 doses of Covaxin. “We at PHANA are trying to help small- and medium-scale hospitals get vaccines and are trying to make bulk purchases to ensure that hospitals get adequate stock,” he said.
The demand for vaccines at private hospitals is high as government hospitals and primary health centres are only vaccinating those older than 45. People in the 18-44 age group will be vaccinated only if they have been identified as frontline workers or as being from vulnerable/priority groups.
But citizens are finding it difficult to get a vacant slot. Shruthi S., 25, who works for a private firm in Bengaluru, said hospitals seem to have a very limited supply of stock. “Every time someone tells me that a particular hospital has stock, I log in to the CoWIN portal, only to find the slots already booked,” she said.
Costlier now
The price for a single dose of vaccine has shot up this month as hospitals are directly procuring it from manufacturers. Many hospitals are charging as much as ₹850 for Covishield, while Covaxin is priced at ₹1,250. Earlier, private hospitals had to charge people ₹250 per dose as the government was supplying them with vaccine at the rate of ₹150.
