Covid booster shot gets off to a slow start in Bihar on opening day

Less than 100 booster doses could be administered to those falling under the age group of 18-60 years on the first day, as most private Covid vaccination centres (CVCs) in Bihar remained closed on Sunday, hospital officials said.

PATNA: Less than 100 booster doses could be administered to those falling under the age group of 18-60 years on the first day, as most private Covid vaccination centres (CVCs) in Bihar remained closed on Sunday, hospital officials said.

A health worker administers a dose of Covid-19 vaccine in Patna. (Santosh Kumar/HT Photo)

“We administered 40 booster doses of Covishield at the revised rate to beneficiaries falling in the 18-60 years age group on the inaugural day of booster shots,” said Santosh Kumar, director (administration) of the Ruban Memorial Hospital in Patna, one of the eight private Covid vaccination centres (CVCs) in Patna.

There was, however, no official confirmation on the booster shots administered to the 18-60 years age group on Sunday, as mandarins in the state health department did not respond to HT’s phone calls or text message and also chose not to issue any communique in this regard till the filing of this report.

Most of the remaining private CVCs, including the Paras Hospital, Mediversal and the Big Apollo Hospital in Patna said they would start giving booster shots from Monday.

The Medanta Hospital said that it is waiting for operational guidelines on the revised pricing of the vaccine from its corporate office.

“We will wait for our operational guidelines on booster dose. We will also have to configure our system with the new rate of the vaccine after we get the go-ahead from our corporate office,” said Dr Ravi Shankar Singh, associate medical director of Medanta Hospital, Patna.

The Buddha Dental College, also in Patna, had run out of stock of Covishield. Its director Dr Binay Kumar Singh said it would take at least 15-20 days to replenish the stock after placing the purchase order on Monday.

Multiplus Hospital and Asian Hospital were the other two private CVCs in Patna.

The CVCs purchase vaccines directly through manufacturers or their distributors after routing their indent for vaccine vials through the CoWIN portal by paying them in advance.

“The Serum Institute of India has said it will compensate for the price difference of the unexpired stocks lying with us in the form of free vials of fresh stocks,” added Kumar of Ruban hospital.

While the manufacturers of Covishield and Covaxin had slashed prices to ₹225 per dose, the government has capped service charge at a maximum of ₹150 per dose. Together with 5% GST, a single dose of Covaxin or Covishield would cost a maximum of ₹386.25 at private CVCs.

The state has 13 private CVCs, vetted by the health department, of which eight are in Patna to administer booster shots to around 6 crore target population between 18 and 60 years of age, said state health officials.

The state had inoculated 25,735 Covid jabs till 6:50pm on Sunday out of the 126.41 million doses administered to beneficiaries so far, according to the CoWIN dashboard. Of this, precautionary or booster doses accounted for 9.44 lakh.