Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday wrote to Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan to increase allocation of vaccines to the state.
He urged the Union government to revise the allocation between government and private medical establishments to 90:10, an increase from the current allocation of 75:25.
Vaccine doses allotted to various States so far has to be evaluated in terms of doses allotted per thousand population, and the government has ensure that necessary compensatory allocations are made to States which have been allotted a lower number of doses per capita, Stalin said in the letter.
“Under the new liberalised vaccination policy, the Union government is buying 75% of the vaccines and the rest are being provided to private hospitals, to allow them to vaccinate better-off individuals on a payment basis. While I agree that a part of the available vaccines has to be shared with the private institutions, I wish to bring to your notice the fact that this 25% allocation to private hospitals is grossly higher when compared to the actual vaccinations done by them,” read the letter.
He went on to say: “The above mismatch between demand and supply in government and private institutions has resulted in a situation where the private hospitals in Tamil Nadu have around 7-8 lakh doses available with them, which is equivalent to one-month performance whereas government institutions are left with just 2 lakh doses which is lesser than their current single day usage. This can be rectified only by a more rational and performance-based distribution of available doses.”
He also thanked the Union Minister for accepting Tamil Nadu’s request to the Union government procuring COVID-19 vaccines centrally and issuing them free of cost to all States for all eligible beneficiaries above 18 years of age.
