Odisha Urges Centre To Allocate Balance Vaccine Share Of Pvt Hospitals To State Govt

The State Health Department of Odisha has requested the Centre to allocate the balance Covid vaccine doses under private hospitals share to the State government.

In a detailed statistical report, the Odisha government has elucidated that despite allocation of 925560 doses of vaccines (Covishield - 756660 & Covaxin - 168900) in the month of June, private vaccination centres procured only 66500 doses (Covishield - 59000 & Covaxin - 7500) for vaccination which is a paltry 7.2% of the total, thereby leaving the 859060 doses as balance.

The State government had recently collaborated with all the private hospitals in the districts/municipal corporations to aggregate their demands for vaccine procurement for July 2021, but the response for procurement of doses is very much limited.

For the month of July, while the Centre has allocated 1016970 doses (Covishield - 843930 & Covaxin - 173040), the demand from the private hospitals have been a meagre total 156830 (Covishield - 126920 & Covaxin - 29910) which is just 15.4% of the total. The difference between the demand and allocation means that there is likelihood that Odisha may miss out from the balance 860140 doses of vaccines.

Odisha Covid Vaccine Allocation Data

In a letter to the Health Ministry, ACS PK Mohapatra has expressed concern that in this context, the State is losing huge quantity of vaccines allocated for private hospitals.

While Odisha is capable of vaccinating 3.5 lakh beneficiaries per day, the Centre has allocated 3050910 doses to the State for the month of July, which will be consumed within 8 to 10 days, the State government pointed out in the letter to the Centre.

Mohapatra has pointed out that around 859060 balance doses of vaccines of June and 860140 doses of July 2021 which were allocated to the private hospitals but not procured for vaccination be diverted to the quota of State government so that Odisha is not disadvantaged.

It may be mentioned here that the State government had recently requested the Centre to revise the government: private allocation ratio from 75:25 to 95:5 due to low presence of private medical care entities in the health sector of the State.