New vax policy prioritises health care workers
Even as the Centre has revised its Covid-19 vaccination policy to provide all doses free to states, it has advised them to prioritise the free vaccines for health care workers, followed by frontline workers, citizens above 45, and those above 18 whose second dose is due, according to the revised guidelines for implementation of the national inoculation programme.
The free doses will be allocated based on criteria such as population, disease burden and the progress of vaccination, they added. “Wastage of vaccine will affect the allocation negatively,” the guidelines said.
The guidelines also encourage the use of non-transferable electronic vouchers that can be redeemed at private vaccination centres. This is being done to financially support the vaccination of economically weaker sections at private centres. HT has accessed the guidelines. “Within the population group of citizens more than 18 years of age, States/ UTs (Union territories) may decide their own prioritization.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday announced that the Centre was taking back the responsibility for procuring vaccines and distributing them to states.
As per the guidelines, the Centre will provide states and Union territories advance information of vaccine doses to be supplied to them and they will have the flexibility to further allocate doses in advance to districts and centres.
The states have been advised to put information in the public domain about the availability at district and vaccination centre level, and widely disseminate it.
To incentivise production by vaccine manufacturers and encourage new vaccines, domestic manufacturers have been given the option to also provide vaccines directly to private hospitals. “This would be restricted to 25% of their monthly production. States/UTs would aggregate the demand of private hospitals keeping in view equitable distribution between large and small private hospitals and regional balance. Based on this aggregated demand, the Government of India will facilitate the supply of these vaccines,” it said.