Covaxin stock to finish in a day, says health minister

The Capital’s stock of Covaxin will last only a day and that of Covishield will last three to four days, Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said on Monday, days after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal requested the Centre for more shots to inoculate the city’s adult population.

Only 274,460 doses — including Covaxin and Covishield — supplied to the state for those aged between 18 and 44 were unused by May 9. There were an additional 467,190 unused doses allocated by the Centre meant for those aged 45 and above, health care workers, and frontline workers. As per the Centre’s directives, the states have to use 70% of these doses to give the second shots to those who have

NEW DELHI:

already received one.

Delhi has been giving nearly 95,000 shots a day during the last week, according to data shared by the government.

Kejriwal on Sunday wrote to Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, requesting that the government come up with a uniform price for the purchase of vaccine doses as states and private hospitals were competing for the same supply.

“A uniform price should be fixed for vaccines for supplies made to governments (Central or state) and to private hospitals. The inherent fallacy and danger in the current pricing mechanism is that there is an obvious incentive for private manufacturers to prioritise supplies to private hospitals over supplies being made to governments since under the current mechanism they will earn more from the latter,” the letter read.

Meanwhile the Union government in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on Sunday justified differential pricing, contending it was “based on the concept of creating an incentivised demand for the private vaccine manufacturers so as to instil a competitive market resulting in higher production of vaccines and market-driven affordable prices”.