Private hospitals to order Covid-19 jabs on CoWin platform from July

Vaccine makers see logistics issues in distributing to smaller hospitals

Come July 1, private hospitals will be able to book Covid-19 vaccine doses directly on the CoWin platform and make advance payments too, indicated multiple private hospital sources. 

The quantum of doses a hospital can purchase, however, will depend on its past track record of vaccination.

Several private hospitals from across the country held a meeting with the Union Ministry of Health on Sunday. The ministry has conveyed to hospitals that from July onwards a single-window system will be in place for vaccine ordering and procurement. This will cover Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Serum Institute of India’s Covishield.

R S Sharma, chief executive of the National Health Authority (NHA) and CoWin chief, and Rajesh Bhushan, Union health secretary, could not be reached for comments.

A senior executive of a south-based hospital chain who was present in the meeting said: “According to the new system, hospitals will place orders or indicate their requirement on CoWin. They can order double the number of doses they have administered in the last seven days. CoWin’s algorithm will assess the demand placed by the hospital and allow the order to be placed.” 

CoWin’s backend has the data related to daily vaccinations done at each site, and thus it can easily track the number of vaccinations done by any hospital in the past week. It would not allow any hospital to place large orders if their past performance shows a low vaccination rate.

“One can also place orders for a full month of doses (again based on its daily vaccination rate), but this will be made available in three tranches,” the executive said. 

He said the government was trying to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines across private hospitals in the country and this became a more pronounced need as vaccinations spread to the hinterland. Through this single-window mechanism, even smaller private hospitals in tier 3 and 4 towns can place orders for vaccine doses.

Another senior executive of a Mumbai-based private hospital elaborated that the Centre indicated the minimum inventory a hospital can carry is seven days and the maximum is 14 days.

“So far we have been told that doses will come from the vaccine makers, however, there could be tweaks to this distribution policy if logistical hurdles arise,” the person quoted above said.

For example, the vaccine maker can deliver the doses to the district cold chain point. Either the district administration or the civic bodies can keep in their cold chain points, and hospitals can pick up from there.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has already collected data from the city-based private hospitals on the expected requirement. The civic body is preparing a list with aggregate demand to the state government, which, in turn, will hand it over to the Centre, said Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner of the BMC.

This would help gauge the demand in the upcoming month from the private sector, he said.

Kakani said there was no guidance on whether the civic body would play a role in the distribution of these vaccines to private hospitals from its cold chain point.

Meanwhile, vaccine makers say distributing to smaller hospitals across the country can be a logistical nightmare. “Smaller hospitals can order only a few thousand doses. Moreover, bulk procurement is also not allowed. Hospitals will order at best a month’s stock. This would be very expensive to transport while maintaining cold chain integrity,” said a senior executive of a vaccine firm.

A large corporate hospital chain, too, pointed out on grounds of anonymity that now they would have to place individual orders for each of their 25-30 hospitals. “Earlier, we were placing aggregated orders for the whole group. When ordering on CoWin, we cannot do that anymore and have to break down the order site-wise,” the executive said.

Such large order volumes may lead to tech glitches on the platform too, the industry felt.