Who will pay for the vaccine; state, Centre or you?

Passengers from Howrah Express being screened and tested for COVID-19 antigens at CSMT on January 1. Pic/Suresh Karkera

On a day the nation held a dry run of the COVID-19 vaccination drive, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan retracted his previous statement saying that vaccination would be free of charge for all Indian citizens, leading to speculation about who will bear the cost of the two shots.

In Maharashtra, Health Minister Rajesh Tope, who supervised a dry run in one district, spoke of Vardhan's free vaccination announcement, made on Saturday. However, the Union Minister's clarification made within hours-stating that the free vaccine would be provided in the first phase to most prioritised beneficiaries, including one crore healthcare and two crore frontline workers-must have come as dampener to the state minister who expected the Centre to pay for the vaccine.

Vardhan's explanation that the details of how the 27 crore priority beneficiaries would be vaccinated until July are being finalised, also raised questions over early vaccination to those outside the priority list. "If priority beneficiaries are expected to get vaccinated by July, others will have to wait at least another seven to eight months," said a healthcare expert working with the government.

Tope could not be contacted over the Union minister's changed stance, but he had said earlier that bearing the vaccination cost was the Centre's responsibility because a large population cannot afford to pay for the two doses that would be administered over a period of 28 days. "As far as the expenditure is concerned, we're waiting for the Centre's announcement. We have given the Centre all data and informed it about the infrastructural deficiencies we face here. We expect all sort of help from the Centre. We have trained 16,000 paramedics for injecting the vaccine (in the first phase)," said Tope.

According to sources in the government, the cost of the vaccination programme does not merely include the price of vaccines, which itself would be mammoth, but also the high expenditure of creating storage infrastructure and logistics/transportation. If the country's entire population is to be vaccinated, the cheapest vaccine would cost it at least R57,000-R60,000 crore. The Maharashtra government would also end up spending hundreds of crores, if it were to vaccinate the entire population in the state. However, experts say not every person in the country needs to be vaccinated and hence the priority beneficiaries are being listed.

States other than Maharashtra have already announced that the people would not have to pay for the vaccine. The Bharatiya Janata Party had promised free vaccine during the Bihar elections, whereas other states haven't specified the source of money they wish to spend on vaccination, or perhaps, they assumed that the Centre would pay for it. As far as Maharashtra is concerned, the state and Centre seem to be heading for yet another skirmish.

2
Number of shots in the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine

16,000
Number of paramedics trained in Maharashtra for injecting the vaccine in the first phase

28
Number of days over which the two shots will be administered

27 CR
Number of priority beneficiaries who will be given the vaccine by July

Rs 57K-60K CR
Cost of vaccinating all of India's population