JOIN USCoronavirus vaccination: Abdicating responsibility
The central government’s bungling on the vaccination policy has continued with its decision to shift the responsibility for procurement of vaccines to the states, which are not equipped for it. The government had first failed to size up the country’s needs and to place orders for vaccines from domestic and foreign manufacturers. When the matter has blown up into a crisis, it has left the states to fend for themselves.
State governments now have to engage with vaccine producers outside the country for their import. Some of them, including Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi, have opted for global tenders to procure vaccines. Punjab has decided to join the global Covax alliance to source them. At least nine states are separately trying to get the vaccines they need, competing with one another. Such a plan lacks sense and logic and makes the situation more difficult and complex.
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State governments will be hard put to negotiate with international manufacturers on prices, quantities and delivery schedules. Competition among them to procure the vaccines on the best conditions will actually go against them because the manufacturers would know that they are all in dire need. A centralised procurement system would have best suited the situation. In fact, such procurements have always been done by the Centre. In the case of the Universal Immunisation Programme, it was the Centre that managed the procurement and dispersal of the vaccines.
The vaccines will be most cost-effective only when there is centralised procurement. Some manufacturers are demanding immunity against liability in the use of the vaccines, and state governments may not be able to give such assurances to them. In no other country have regional governments been told to look for vaccines on their own. States should not be left at the mercy of international market forces on such an important matter.
It is argued that the Centre has only given the responsibility that the states have sought in the management of the pandemic. But the states’ complaints about centralisation were in a different context when the central government even decided when and how lockdowns were implemented. There is an acute shortage of vaccines in the country, and many states have closed vaccination centres and postponed vaccination of people in the 18-44 age group.
There is popular demand for vaccination which is putting pressure on state governments. It will be difficult for the states to bargain for the vaccines, to decide on bids and to enter into agreements. One state has already said that it will not give vaccines to the “citizens’’ of other states. Such sentiments will get aggravated if states have to spend their own money to import the vaccines.