Mumbai: COVID vaccination getting good response at private centres

A woman and a cop get vaccinated against COVID-19 at the civic-run Nair hospital on Friday. Pic/Ashish Raje

Vaccination centres at private hospitals have been getting a good response for the past week ever since the drive to cover senior citizens and people with comorbidities started. Although their capacity to vaccinate is one-fifth that of government centres, of the 2.46 lakh common citizens who have got the dose so far, one-third opted for private hospitals and the numbers are increasing.

On March 1, when vaccination started for the general public, only three private hospitals had permissions to give the vaccination. The central government capped the charges of vaccination at Rs 250 - Rs 150 for vaccines and Rs 100 as a service charge. In the first three days, 2,386 common citizens got a jab at these hospitals, whereas 17,271 people turned to civic-run centres for inoculation.

On March 4, permission to 19 centres at private hospitals with a capacity of vaccinating 3,100 people was given and 4,128 people got the jab on that day. Now there are 46 centres with a total capacity of 8,545 in private hospitals. They are inoculating more than double their capacity.

On Friday, 15,682 people got vaccinated at private centres, out of which 13,946 were common citizens and the rest were health and frontline workers, while on the same day, civic-run centres vaccinated 26,275 people.

Though civic-run centres are taking two-thirds of the load of vaccination, the load is shifting to private hospitals. Centres at private hospitals have inoculated 1,02,453 people so far, while civic centres have vaccinated 4.48 lakh people since January.

The central government has given permission to run vaccination centres 24 hours a day and seven days a week. But the process has not started yet. "It is good that private hospitals are actively participating in the vaccination. The process of starting 24X7 centres at private hospitals may take some times as we have to see how many hospitals are willing to run it 24 hours a day and accordingly changes will have to be done in the app and portal," said Dr Mangla Gomare, executive health officer, BMC.

1,02,453
No. of people vaccinated at private centres so far