Finally, wisdom dawned and the Centre will now be procuring and distributing vaccines to the States. Because of the vacillation between the Centre and States the people had to suffer. There are two issues. First, the vaccine manufacturers would sell 75% of their stock to the Centre and 25% to private hospitals. Why cannot the Centre buy all the vaccines and supply even to the private hospitals at the same price? Or the hospitals could buy their share at the same discounted price to stop over-pricing by the vaccine makers. The service charge of Rs 150 could be retained.
Secondly, the Centre has notified that each shot in private hospitals will cost Rs 780 for Covishield, Rs 1,145 for Sputnik V and Rs 1,410 for Covaxin. These prices include taxes and Rs 150 as service charges.
Although Covaxin is free in government hospitals for 18- to 44-year-old persons but not everyone would prefer to go there for some or the other reasons. In private hospitals it would cost Rs 11,280 only for a family of 4 members to take 2 jabs of Covaxin. This is a significant amount in these days of pandemic and inflation.
Add to this the twisted logic that if the 5% GST on the vaccines be removed then the cost would escalate as the cost of the ancillary materials would shoot up. Hope these are not gameplans to kill the competition to the other 2 vaccines!
The Centre and its advisors need to re-think and reduce the price of Covaxin else there would be hardly any takers for it.
