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As India’s Covid-19 Vaccination Drive moves to expand towards its 2nd Phase in March, the Government is now looking to involve the Private Sector to cover a much larger target population of 27 cr people. The drive would target citizens above 50 years of age and those below 50 with serious co-morbidities making them vulnerable to the disease.

Despite India completing the proud milestone of 100 cr vaccinations in 26 days from when the drive began, the numbers are minuscule relative to the country’s 130 crore population. The pace of the ongoing vaccination program needs to be speeded up in order to build herd immunity, and the involvement of private players could complement the Government’s efforts.

Various industry leaders including Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra and Industry Lobby groups such as Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have made a strong pitch for proactive participation of the private sector to bolster vaccination efforts. Wipro founder Aziz Premji has also vouched to cover 50 crore people within 6 days. "Within Rs 400 a shot, it is possible to do mass vaccination of the population”, he added.

It is worth noting that the current vaccination drive in India is being carried out by the government, except for the private sector healthcare employees who have been vaccinated by their respective private hospitals.

Meanwhile, Congress has also demanded from the Centre to open up the market for private partners to increase speed and coverage for the vaccinations. “Speed & Inject Many’ instead of ‘Slow & Steady’ should be the alpha & omega of vaccination drive.”, it said.

In a country like India where we have a hybrid healthcare system, involvement of the private sector is a matter of when not if. It should be carefully planned out with the private sector supplementing and increasing capacity through a proper public-private partnership led by the public sector.

This would be similar to the US’s approach where vaccination is happening with involvement of the federal, state, and private sectors. However, there is also strict monitoring and hefty fines for any violation, as should also be put in place in India.

NITI Aayog member Dr. VK Paul has said that the Government is firming details of the next stage of vaccination and private sector participation would be on a large scale. It is aiming for 50,000 sessions per day even as 67% and 40% of health and frontline workers have been inoculated with the first dose of vaccine. Reportedly, around 40-50% of total sessions would be organized in private hospitals.

Involvement of the private sector has the potential to speed up India’s vaccination drive, considering that left to Government alone it could be a highly time-consuming task to inoculate India’s humongous population.

The eventual aim should be to make the vaccine available for the common person at the nearest and earliest for voluntary inoculation. This becomes all the more important in the current scenario as Covid-19 cases once again begin to rise in the country.