Private hospitals procured 1.27 crore Covid-19 vaccines doses in May, administered 83.61 lakh jabs till June 15: Centre

Centre's response comes a few days after YS Jagan Mohan Reddy once again requested the Centre to take back unused vaccine doses procured by private hospitals and re-allot them to the states in a bid to boost their vaccination drive.

Minister of state for health Bharati Pravin Pawar told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that private hospitals have directly procured 1.27 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine in May. "Under the 'Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated National Covid-19 Vaccination Strategy', which came into effect from May 1, a total of 127.34 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccines were procured directly by private hospitals in May," Pawar said in a written reply.

Private hospitals have administered only 83.61 lakh doses between May and June 15.

But the private hospitals administered only 83.61 lakh doses between May and June 15. "A total of 83.61 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered at private Covid Vaccination Centres (CVCs) from May to 15th June, 2021," she told the Upper House of the Parliament.

The Centre introduced the ‘Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated National COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy' to ensure flexible pricing, procurement, and administration of vaccines and to augment production and availability across the country. Under the policy, the states and the private hospitals were allowed to directly procure up to 50% of the vaccine doses produced by the manufacturers.

Pawar’s response comes a few days after Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy once again requested the Centre to take back unused vaccine doses procured by private hospitals and re-allot them to the states in a bid to boost their vaccination drive.

“In reality, the private hospitals are not vaccinating fully to their capacity. Whatever these people are earmarked and whatever they are not able to proceed with, if that quota (of vaccines) is re-allotted to the state government, it would help us in doing a better job,” Reddy told the Prime Minister on July 17, reported PTI.