Vaccine orders only through Cowin, monthly hats for private hospitals

New Delhi: Private hospitals must route Covid vaccine orders through Cowin – where they must register – and can no longer buy direct doses from producers, the government said on Tuesday.
The government also imposes a hat, or “maximum limit”, in the number of doses of private hospitals can order for a certain month, to balance limited supplies and prevent waste.

New guidelines come into effect from July 1, and include formulas – consumption of the average vaccine dose every day in a period of seven days (the hospital can choose a seven-day period) from the previous month – to calculate private hospitals “maximum monthly boundary boundary”.

For example, if a private hospital is an order for July, it can choose 10-16 June as a seven-day period. In that period, if used 700 doses, the daily average is 100. “maximum monthly boundary”, therefore, is 100 doses x 31 days (for July) x 2 (doubled), which is 6,200 doses.

The hospital joins the vaccination drive for the first time a vaccine will be allocated based on the number of beds available.

All private hospitals will include the required details into the Cowin database which will then aggregate the demand of the district and the state before providing information to the manufacturer.

There was no previous agreement from the government authorities needed.

The revision of the purchase process for private hospitals came in the middle of a call from several states – including Tamil Nadu and Odisha – requesting changes in the dose allocation of 75:25.

“Liberalization Vaccination Policy” which came into force on June 21 – after the center again controlled vaccination from the country – allowing private hospitals to buy 25 percent of the monthly output of vaccine producers.

The remaining 75 percent must be purchased by the center and distributed to the country “based on criteria such as population, disease burden and vaccination progress”.

Earlier this week the Chairman of the Minister of Tamil Nadu MK Stalin told the center that “25 percent allocation for private hospitals is very high when compared to the actual vaccination carried out by them”.

He said in the Tamil Nadu’s personal facility, it only uses a dose of 6.5 lakh (from 1.43 given so far), which translates to only 4.5 percent “.

Similar concerns were also marked by the Head of Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Jaganmohan Reddy; Reddy wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said “past experience and vaccine demand in private hospitals” shows they cannot use effectively using a very large amount.

He also marks pricing problems; According to the center command earlier this month, a personal hospital charge ₹ 780 per dose Covishield, ₹ 1,145 per dose Sputnik V and ₹ 1,410 per dose of covaxin. It includes tax and service fees ₹ 150 per dose.

He claims private hospitals, in fact, charging up to ₹ 25,000 per dose.

The price of vaccines has become a sensitive subject because the center allows producers to decide on what price doses are sold to private hospitals (and, under previous rules, state too).

The price triggered the accusation of the “vaccine udder” by the opposition and questions from the Supreme Court, especially because it was free of the first phase of the vaccination drive.