The Andhra Pradesh government wants the Centre to urgently procure COVID-19 vaccine doses originally allotted to private hospitals, but not lifted by them and allocate them to the State government instead. The government wants these unutilised vaccine doses to be procured and supplied to it for implementation of the vaccination drive through the government’s nearly 1,500 vaccination centres. This, in the Andhra Pradesh government’s view, “will go a long way in speeding up the State’s vaccination drive and enable effective utilisation of the available resources to achieve complete vaccination coverage at the earliest”.
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 29, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy highlighted the State’s capacity to take up large-scale vaccination drives successfully. He cited the State’s record of June 20 when it vaccinated more than 13.72 lakh people on a single day. Jagan Mohan Reddy said in the letter that the vaccinations at private hospitals in Andhra Pradesh had fallen way short of the number of vaccines that private hospitals demanded and procured. He pointed out that of the 1,55,33,191 vaccine doses administered in the State until June 29, only 2,67,075 were in private hospitals.
The Chief Minister stated that more than 17.71 lakh doses had been earmarked for private hospitals in the State in July and was of the view that the hospitals would not be able to utilise the entire stock. He stated that private hospitals and industrial establishments (through their hospitals) had been able to procure up to 25 per cent of the vaccine doses produced by the two Indian manufacturers under the Centre’s vaccine policy implemented from May 1. Jagan Mohan Reddy said: “The 25 per cent allocation of available vaccine doses to the private hospitals has been continued in the revised norms for implementation of the vaccination programme, which came into force from June 21.”
Given the above facts Jagan Mohan Reddy wanted the Centre to adopt a more rational distribution of available vaccine doses between the government and private hospitals. Indicating that similar opinions had been expressed by some other States, during the video conference conducted by the Union Cabinet Secretary with chief secretaries on June 24, Jagan Mohan Reddy requested the Prime Minister to take an early decision on the issue.
Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Minister stated, was in a unique position to vaccinate lakhs of people daily because of the 15,004 village and ward secretariats that had been set up all over the State aided by 2.66 lakh volunteers, each responsible for 50 households, more than 40,000 Asha workers, more than 19,000 auxiliary nurse midwives and a vast number of primary health centres and community health centres.
RAVI SHARMA
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