Over 70 per cent of COVID-19 vaccination happened in public health facilities

A senior citizen gets vaccinated at Babasaheb Ambedkar Municipal General Hospital, Kandivali. Pic/Satej Shinde

The public health facilities in India have administered 71.23 per cent doses of overall Covid vaccines to its beneficiaries while the private health facilities have covered 28.77 per cent, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said during a press briefing on Thursday.

"The public facilities include primary health centres, community health centres, sub divisional hospitals, district hospitals, medical college hospitals and so on," he noted.

Meanwhile, the kind of private health facilities entangled in vaccination drive are those empanelled under Ayushaman Bharat PM Jan Aarogya Yojana, Central Government Health Scheme, and state government health insurance schemes.

However, three states and a Union Territory including Odisha, Telangana, Maharashtra and Delhi have been exempted to involve private facilities which are not covered under aforementioned policies based on specific recommendation, the secretary told the reporters.

"Based on specific recommendations, we permitted them (private hospitals not covered under any central or state health insurance scheme) citing sufficient space for vaccination, enough cold chain points, adequate number of vaccinators and robust arrangement to handle adverse events following immunization," said Bhushan.

The private hospitals have been permitted to perform vaccination exercises 24x7 all days in a week. However, government hospitals are directed to conduct vaccination drives for minimum four days a week.

"If the vaccination in the public health facilities is done round the clock then who will look after the non-Covid patients. They have been directed to conduct vaccination for minimum four days a week but not encouraged to do vaccination all the seven days," Bhushan said.

As per the government's data, 25.6 million doses of Covid vaccines have been administered so far.

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