Covid-19 pandemic: Supply issues hit vax offtake, say private hospitals

Amid concerns over slow pace of vaccination in private vaccination centres, private hospitals have flagged shortage of fresh stocks, less demand for paid vaccines and in some cases no allocation by the state as reasons behind poor offtake. While many big hospital chains are sustaining vaccination on the leftover stock from previous orders, smaller hospitals are unable to access vaccines through any channel. 

“We have not received any vaccines from the government or vaccine manufacturers even though we are registered on CoWIN. We do not know why,” said Shuchin Bajaj, founder director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals. 

Large corporate hospital chains, on the other hand, have been carrying stock, which has resulted in limited orders by them on CoWin in July, industry sources said. 

For instance, two large South-based corporate hospitals said they had enough vaccine stock for now, and are pushing to scale up vaccinations.

“We have not used it (CoWin) yet, as we had stock available from the direct orders placed earlier,” said Manipal Hospitals managing director, Dilip Jose. 

However, even among the big chains, many have exhausted their stocks and are feeling the pinch of poor availability and the complex process of procurement. “In several states, there is still no clarity on how we can procure and what are the timelines for delivery. Also, demand for paid vaccines has fallen sharply due to widespread publicity of free vaccinations,” a Fortis Healthcare spokesperson said.

While the Centre has asked states to remove bottlenecks in procurement of vaccines by private Covid vaccination centres, companies believe that one of the factors responsible for slow pace of vaccination in the private sector, is the price of the vaccine — Rs 780 for Covishield and Rs 1,410 for Covaxin — as compared to the previously fixed price of Rs 250. “Consequently, most private centres, which have vaccine stocks available, are getting relatively fewer people as many people might be willing to wait for a free jab in the government vaccination centres,” said Harsh Mahajan, president, NATHEALTH. 

There are over 1,800 private Covid vaccination sites in the country, while more than 29,000 government centres.

Private hospitals have also observed that the vaccination demand is beginning to taper off in major cities that have already reached a certain coverage in terms of immunisation.

The civic bodies, meanwhile, are aggregating the demand from private hospitals, and are forwarding the same to state governments as part of the new vaccine guidelines that came into force on June 21. Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner, BMC, said they aggregate the demand indicated by private hospitals in Mumbai, pass it on to the state government, which, in turn, shares it with the Centre.

One small hospital chain owner said they do not have the resources to pay off local officials who sign on the amount of vaccines to be allocated to each private hospital. “Local authorities at the district level approve the vaccine allocation, which then gets the nod of the chief minister’s office. We have to figure out how to work the back channels,” he said. 

Under the revised guidelines for Covid vaccination, 25 per cent of the stock with the manufacturers is available for procurement by private hospitals. States are required to aggregate their demand and use the Co-WIN platform as the backend management tool for placing orders.

Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan had said in a review meeting on Wednesday that many private centres had not placed orders for the earmarked quantities of Covid vaccines. If the order was placed, the private centres had not made part of the payment for the indented vaccines. In some cases, no payment had been made towards the order placed, the health ministry said. 

About 20 million doses are available with the states and private hospitals to be administered are still while 8.3 million doses are in the pipeline, health ministry said.