Eatala Rajender criticises vaccine pricing

The Minister was critical of the Centre over the way the entire vaccination process was handled

Hyderabad: It is unfair to have three different prices for Covid vaccines in the country, Health Minister Eatala Rajender said on Thursday. “The Centre has so far procured vaccine dose for Rs 150. Now, to vaccinate individuals above 18 years, the States have to procure the vaccine doses for Rs 400 while private hospitals have to procure for Rs 600. At a time when the entire country is under the influence of the pandemic, poor families will find it very hard to afford, if vaccines are expensive,” he said.

The Minister was critical of the Centre over the way the entire vaccination process was handled. “They (MOHFW) misread the situation and did not make any prior arrangements to either procure Covid vaccines or increase production. Now, when the entire country is impacted by the second wave, they are trying to encourage pharma companies to enhance productions,” he said.

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Rajender pointed out that from the beginning, MOHFW was unfair in the way it allotted Covid vaccines to Telangana. “At present, we can vaccinate 1.6 lakh individuals daily across Telangana. However, the MOHFW is not ensuring a steady supply of vaccine doses. The Union Health Ministry supplies lakhs of vaccine doses to some States but strangely does not match it by supplying similar doses to performing States like Telangana. We can administer Covid vaccine to 10 lakh individuals in a single day in Telangana,” he said. The target population in Telangana is to administer at least 3 crore individuals and at present, the overall number of individuals who have received the vaccine at least once was between 35 lakh and 36 lakh, he added.

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