Hyderabad: In its latest report, the RBI has suggested speeding up the vaccination drive, improving basic health infrastructure and intensification of the pandemic restriction measures to tide over the present calamitous situation caused by COVID-19.
Experiences from the USA, the UK and Chile indicate that the vaccine will be useful in containing the disease intensity and mortality.
The Centre launched its vaccination drive on January 16 and continued its expansion in a phased manner. It has announced universal vaccination from May 1 to all those above 18 years. While ensuring free vaccination to all above 45 years, the Centre has not taken the responsibility of vaccinating 60 crore people in the 18-45 years age group free of cost.
While announcing financial support to the Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech, the Centre had stated that half of the vaccines produced by these organizations will be written under its own account and respective vaccine manufacturers can decide the price of the vaccine and sell it to state governments and private hospitals.
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Already 14.5 crore doses of the vaccine have been consumed in India. Even then, only two per cent of the country’s population has been administered both doses of the vaccine. The demand for the vaccine is going to grow exponentially from May 1 in the backdrop of the severe surge of the pandemic. With supply unlikely to increase overnight, the state governments are likely to face severe pressure, which may lead to great confusion.
The Centre had earmarked Rs 35,000 crore in the budget for COVID-19 vaccination. It will be spending less than Rs 10,000 crore for providing the vaccine to people above 45 years of age. While the government had earlier announced that money did not bother in vaccinating its citizens, it now seems to have forgotten its words. As a result, the Centre is trying to impose an additional burden of Rs 48,000 crore on states, which is not justified. Even if the governments of 20 states take upon their shoulders the responsibility of providing free vaccine, the danger of hapless people losing their right to life due to various factors continues to loom large.
It is worth recalling the warning issued by the World Health Organization that no one is safe until everyone is safe. That is the reason countries like the US, the UK, Germany, France and China are providing free vaccine to all their citizens. The vaccine strategy being followed by the Government of India is likely to widen the rift not only between the rich and the poor states but also between different strata of the society.
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India has been implementing a universal free vaccination programme for the past seven decades. Control of inter-state communicable diseases features in the concurrent list of subjects. The state governments have already suffered a fall in revenues as a result of the COVID-19 surge.
So far, the price decided by the government for each dose of vaccine at private hospitals was Rs 250. Next month onwards, the price is likely to increase five folds - it will break the back of the middle class.
The financial position of the states may not permit them to negotiate vaccine price with companies such as Sputnik V, Moderna and Pfizer. If the country is to recover from this unprecedented public health crisis, the Centre should continue to implement the entire vaccination programme. It should protect the right to life, enshrined in the Constitution, by monitoring the production, import, distribution and pricing of the vaccine.
