Centre should provide free Covid vaccine to poor: Maharashtra

State health minister Rajesh Tope said on Tuesday that people below the poverty line cannot afford the vaccine even if its two doses are priced at Rs500

The Maharashtra government has demanded free Covid-19 vaccination for the poor. The state government has said it would raise the issue during a video conference with the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) on January 7.

Representational Image. (File photo)

State health minister Rajesh Tope said on Tuesday that people below the poverty line cannot afford the vaccine even if its two doses are priced at Rs500 and so, the Centre should bear the cost for them. “People below the poverty line, persons with comorbidity and population above 60 years should be given the vaccine for free. We are going to raise this demand during our conference with the MoHFW on Thursday. Though there is no clarity on it as yet, we believe that it has been made free for health workers, frontline workers by the Centre. The poor people too should get it for free,” he said.

Tope said that epidemic diseases and their handling is the responsibility of the Centre and the state has followed all its instructions and protocol right from the beginning of the outbreak. “For the past three months, the Centre has not been providing us equipment like ventilators, RT-PCR kits, and tablets like Remdesivir and Tocilozumab. The state has borne the expense of making them available through public health services...We have also been bearing the establishment cost for the drive including training of the vaccinators, storage of the vaccine. Now, the Centre should take the responsibility of cost of the vaccine for the poor,” he added.

The health minister said that the state is going to conduct dry run for vaccination in all the 36 districts, including Mumbai, on January 8. “Maharashtra is all set for the vaccination, which we expect to be rolled out in the next 8-10 days. We have a cold chain system in place, 16,000 vaccinators have been trained and are ready for the drive. 780,000 health care workers have already been registered on CoWIN app, while people from other categories, like frontline workers, are being registered by the respective departments. We are all set to roll out the programme once it is announced by the Centre. We expect the release of the vaccine doses by the Centre in proportion of the registrations done,” Tope said.

He said that in the wake of the second strain of the virus found in some of the UK returnees in Maharashtra, the state has decided to strictly follow the quarantine protocol. As per the new guidelines, asymptomatic passengers found with second stain of virus will have to go through 14 to 21 days of the quarantine.