Firms in Gurugram can tie up with pvt hospitals, vaccinate staff on premises

Private hospitals can set up session sites on premises in Gurugram to provide doses.

Gurugram’s health department on Wednesday gave permission to private companies to tie up with city-based private hospitals to get their employees vaccinated for the coronavirus, a move that officials believe will help significantly accelerate the campaign.

With this decision, private hospitals can set up session sites on premises to provide doses, said health department officials. (HT Photo)

The health department said many private companies approached it in recent days, seeking permission to inoculate employees at a large scale and in one go.

With this decision, private hospitals can set up session sites on premises to provide doses, said health department officials.

“Private hospitals can enter into tie-ups with private companies for vaccinating their employees provided they follow the standard operating procedures (SOP) stipulated by the government in this regard. All conditions related to space, infrastructure, manpower and cold chain mandated by rules will have to be followed,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurugram.

Yadav said private hospitals in the city have large capacities and need to be utilised optimally, which was why they allowed private hospitals to tie up with companies in a captive manner. “Teams from private hospitals can set up session sites on the premises of these companies and conduct vaccination as happened in the case of RWAs. Also, with citizens above the age of 45 years being allowed to get vaccinated now, a large number of corporate executives can be covered,” he said.

As per data shared by the health department, government vaccination sites have inoculated almost double the number of people when compared to the private sector. “If the capacity of private hospitals is used to the maximum, we will be able to vaccinate far more people,” said Yadav.

On Wednesday, the government hospitals vaccinated 12,382 beneficiaries while the number in private hospitals stood at merely 1,906 beneficiaries.

“The introduction of vaccination in RWAs helped and I hope the vaccination improves with the proposed tie-ups with private companies,” he said.

Vinod Sood, managing director, Hughes Systiqe, who also holds the chair of NASSCOM, Haryana, said that allowing hospitals to tie-up with companies for vaccination will greatly boost the numbers.

“We were already planning to seek permission for vaccination at our premises and now we will try to take maximum benefit from this directive. We will bear the cost of inoculating not only our employees and their families but also third party workers. To beat Covid-19 we will have to accelerate vaccination,” he said.