Booster dose for adults: Private hospital look to empty their stocks

The Centre’s decision to permit Covid booster vaccination for all adults, starting April 10, has elated private hospitals in the city.

As per the announcement, while government medical centres can administer booster shots to only those aged over 60 years, healthcare staff and frontline workers, private hospitals can give them to all adults.

The decision has come as a shot in the arm for private hospitals that were left with huge stocks of unsold Covid vaccines after the government made the vaccination free for all at state-run healthcare centres.

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So far only 14,25,781 precautionary doses have been administered in Karnataka. So private hospitals are quite hopeful of getting large crowds.

The Manipal Group, with 10 hospitals in Bengaluru and two in the rest of Karnataka, had 56,000 Covishield and 17,000 Covaxin doses left with it as of Friday.

Karthik Rajagopal, Group COO, Manipal Hospitals, said: “Now that government vaccination centres will not be offering the third dose free of charge for the 18-60 age group unless it is a healthcare worker or a frontline worker, we expect a good number of people to visit private hospitals for the same”.

The private hospitals were previously struggling to liquidate the stock as they faced issues of fast-expiring vaccines, relabelling issues and low demand for paid vaccination.

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Apollo Hospital Jayanagar Medical Superintendent Dr Govindaiah Yatheesh said they had 20,000 doses of Covishield and 600 of Covaxin. “We will gauge the demand, and depending on the public response, we will decide on procuring more and placing fresh orders. We will cater to the needs of the population,” Yatheesh said.

Not all hospital chains are upbeat about the announcement though.

The Sparsh Hospital group, for example, had 40,000 Covishield doses expire in March and is left with 11,000 Covaxin doses only.

Guruprasad B R, the director of the strategy at Sparsh Hospital, told DH, “Since we had a bad experience, we do not want to purchase any new stock. We will administer doses till our stocks last.”

He added that only 60 per cent of his healthcare staff took precaution doses even when it was offered free of charge because there was no fear of Covid anymore in the population. “I don’t expect a large number of people to come forward for the booster,” he said.

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