Kolkata: Pvt hosps stare at wastage of vax, some plan free shots – ET HealthWorld

Kolkata: Vaccine stocks lying with private hospitals across the city will start expiring by the beginning of March even as the inoculation drive at most private Covid Vaccination Centres (CVC) has slowed down drastically over the last few weeks. The latter now stare at a major part of their existing stock going to waste. Some have even appealed to the government for an advisory to salvage the situation while a few others have started planning to dispose off their vials through CSR activities

RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences currently have 3,000 doses of Covishield that would expire by March first week while its stock of 2,000 doses of Covaxin will expire in May. The hospital’s daily average consumption of vaccine at present is only about 40 doses for Covishield and less than 20 doses for Covaxin.
“Since we don’t want these vials to go waste, we are planning series of outreach camps through our CRS activities to offer these doses free of cost. They start in a couple of days and will go on till March 6,” said R Venkatesh, Narayana Health’s regional director (East).

The hospital will also seek clearance from the state government to offer its unconsumed Covaxin doses to underprivileged youngsters between 15-17 years of age in house camps.
“It will be a national wastage if we don’t utilise our stock within the expiry date. Therefore, we have started planning to dispense our unutilised stock through CSR activities. Talks are on with NGOs. We will not be able to recover the cost we had incurred in procuring the vial. But such activities well prevent wastage,” said group CEO AMRI Hospital Rupak Barua.

Despite footfalls in private CVCs going down since October last year, hospitals had expected a rise in attendance after the ‘precaution’ dose was announced for senior citizens along with the 15-18 group.

“We currently have just around 60 doses administered daily. Going at this rate, a good number of vials are going to be wasted. The manufacturing companies do not want to take these back. Let us see how we can prevent the wastage,” said Peerless Hospital CEO Sudipta Mitra.

“We have a huge stock of about 1.5 lakh doses of Covishield. Even as the expiry is July, it will be extremely difficult to utilise these,” said Alok Roy, chairman Medica Group of Hospitals.

Rupali Basu, MD & CEO, Woodlands Hospital said the hospital is staring at wastage of 11,000 Covaxin doses in May-end, the expiry date. “I would request the government to procure the consignment from us and continue the free drive,” said Basu. “As for Covishield, we have a little over 3,500 doses that expire in mid-July but we should be able to liquidate the stock in time,” she added.