COVID-19 VACCINE FOR THOSE OVER 60 FROM MAR 1

And also for those over 45 with comorbidities; free at govt centres, for a price at private hospitals

India will start the next stage of vaccinating those above 60 years of age and those above 45 with comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart ailments, from March 1, the government announced in a Cabinet briefing on Wednesday. The vaccines will be given for free in over 10,000 government hospitals and will come for a price, which is yet to be decided, in more than 20,000 private centres. Around 270 million people are expected to be covered in the third phase of the vaccination drive.

India will start the next stage of vaccinating those above 60 years of age and those above 45 with comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart ailments, from March 1, the government announced in a Cabinet briefing on Wednesday.

The vaccines will be given for free in over 10,000 government hospitals and will come for a price, which is yet to be decided, in more than 20,000 private centres. Around 270 million people are expected to be covered in the third phase of the vaccination drive. Of these, 100 million will be those aged above 60.

The government is likely to put a cap on what the private sector would be allowed to charge for the jab. “In the next 34 days, the health ministry will announce the price at which private hospitals would provide the vaccine,” Union minister Prakash Javadekar told mediapersons.

The health ministry will shortly announce the list of comorbidities that will be given priority for vaccinating those aged over 45.

“We wanted to build faith in the vaccine, that is why it was administered to health and frontline workers. We should be proud that our product is going all around the world. Most of us ministers will pay for the vaccine,” IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

So far, more than 12 million Indians have received the Covid vaccine.

These include health and frontline workers who were the top priority for the vaccination.

“With very few cases of adverse effects, the need of the hour is to accelerate the pace of inoculation in Phase 2. The private sector will continue to strengthen the government’s capacity across the value chain of Covid-19 vaccine distribution and administration, testing and treatment to foster lastmile delivery,” said Siddhartha Bhattacharya, secretary general, NATHEALTH-HEALTHCARE Federation of India.

The first phase of vaccination was expected to cover 300 million people including 10 million health care workers in both public and private space, and 20 million frontline workers including armed forces, police personnel, disaster management volunteers and municipal workers. So far, over 68 per cent of health and 42 per cent of frontline workers have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The Co-win system, which is a cloud-based IT platform that allows beneficiary registration, session microplanning and realtime reporting of vaccination, is likely to be tweaked to allow the population aged over 60 and those over 45 with comorbidities to register for the jab.

The government also plans to issue a vaccination certificate to the beneficiaries through the app.

Once a beneficiary is registered on the Co-win system, the next step would be to verify their details through a photo identification document such as driving licence, PAN card, passport, pension document, voter ID, among others. The district administration will acknowledge the registration through an SMS and inform the beneficiary about the date and time of vaccination.

“It is a positive move to include the private sector, and we are keen to participate,” a spokesperson of Max Healthcare said, adding, “We await clarity from the government on how to take this forward in terms of required manpower and centres. We have the capability to ramp up our operations to provide coverage to a large spread of population.”

The government is also likely to soon take a decision on the interval between the two doses.