Bhubaneswar: In view of the poor presence of private hospitals, the state government Monday urged the Centre to allocate Covid-19 vaccines to Odisha at a ratio of 95:5 for government and private hospitals instead of 75:25 fixed by the later.
The Centre has revised its guidelines for implementation of Covid vaccination programme, which will come into effect from June 21 across the country. As per the fresh guidelines, 25 per cent of monthly production of vaccines by domestic manufacturers will be directly procured by private hospitals while the Union government will procure 75 per cent of the vaccines and supply to states.
In a letter to Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) PK Mohapatra said only four private hospitals in Odisha have been able to procure vaccines directly from manufacturers so far.
“The presence of private hospitals in Odisha is very low and limited to only about 5 per cent of the total health care sector in the state. Hence, the Odisha government apprehends that as per the existing guidelines, the state will lose out on its proportionate share of 25 per cent allocation of vaccines to the private sector,” Mohapatra wrote to Bhushan.
In this backdrop, he urged the Union Health Secretary to revise the vaccine allocation ratio to 95:5 for government and private hospitals.
Moreover, Mohapatra has urged the Centre to provide the vaccine allocation for private hospitals to the state government for subsequent mobilisation and allocation to private hospitals.
Last Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the Centre will provide free vaccines to all people above 18 years of age from June 21. At that time, he had set the new rules of vaccine allocation.
Meanwhile, the Health department ACS has asked all collectors, municipal commissioners and CDMOs to conduct vaccination of the beneficiaries, whose second dose was due since June 10, on priority basis.
The officials have been asked to regularly monitor the second dose coverage of Covid vaccination centre-wise and block-wise for timely vaccination of beneficiaries. Mohapatra advised them to conduct on-site vaccination of left out beneficiaries on priority basis.
As per the database on CoWin portal (June 9, 2021), 64,465 health care workers, 34,893 frontline workers and 93,191 citizens in the state, are already due for second dose but are yet to be vaccinated.
PNN