The Health Ministry reported today that the cost of a coronavirus vaccine would be limited to $250 per shot in private hospitals and medical centres. Vaccines will be available at no cost in all public hospitals and clinics.
When the coronavirus vaccination programme extends Monday to include those over 60 and those over 45 with illnesses, the government said on Friday that people will be able to select their own vaccination centres.
They can enrol or walk into vaccination centres via the government’s CoWIN 2.0 platform, the Aarogya Setu app. State governments will also actively organize citizens.
In the country, apart from all government hospitals and health centres, there are now more than 10,000 private hospitals that are authorized to give out vaccines.
Those over 60 will only have to demonstrate their age identity, and those over 45 with chronic conditions will have to get a form issued by a licenced medical practitioner.
More About Vaccines Condition In India:
This weekend, the nation stopped the use of vaccines to update software used to organise its programme, as it plans to extend coverage beyond the 1.15 crore health and front-line employees vaccinated since 16 January.
But due to the unwillingness of health and front-line staff to take the home-grown COVAXIN shot that was accepted without late-stage effectiveness results, the inoculation programme has progressed slower than anticipated.
Just 11% of people who have been vaccinated have selected the Bharat Biotech product and the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research.
India aims to immunise 30 of its 135 crore individuals by August with the world’s highest count of infections just after the United States. Officials agree that encouraging people to select their own clinics, essentially allowing them to choose their own vaccines, would speed up the roll-out.
“The fundamental shift in this phase is that citizens in the identified age groups, as also those healthcare workers and frontline who have been missed out or left out of the present phase of vaccination, can select vaccination centres of their choice,” the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in a statement.
Bharat Biotech has said that the performance parameter on nearly 26,000 people who took the COVAXIN shot would be out soon from a late-stage study. Together with India’s drug regulator, the company says COVAXIN, based on early and moderate studies, is secure and reliable
More vaccines, including Russia’s Sputnik-V and Cadila Healthcare’s ZyCov-D, are expected to be certified for use in the world’s second-most populated nation in the coming months.
Aside from vaccine anxiety, initial CoWIN glitches hampered India’s immunisation campaign, prompting several states to go offline. The device is part of the government’s “Aarogya Setu,” or Health Bridge, contact-tracking app, which has been downloaded by nearly 17 crore people.
