Private hospitals in India cannot directly obtain vaccines for Coronavirus from the manufacturers which start from July 1. They have to place orders in the Centre's Coin portal for the vaccines.
All private hospitals across the country will have to register in the CoWin portal as a Private COVID Vaccination Centre (PCVC) to partake in the aggregation mechanism.
Sources stated that most hospitals have already registered on the portal.
The union health ministry in a statement said: "States and UTs will be informed by MoHFW, about the total quantum of doses available for private CVCs in a month for them. They will aggregate the demand from private CVCs, keeping these quantities in mind."
Hospitals will not have to go for approval from the government, only successful submission of the procurement orders on the government portal will be acceptable. The supply of these vaccines to the private hospitals will be facilitated by the union health ministry after the payment has been made electronically through the NHA portal.
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"The likely monthly consumption shall be estimated by multiplying the daily average consumption during the week of the choice of the Private CVC (PCVC) in the previous month by 30. The maximum limit will be twice this quantity," the instructions by the ministry read.
For instance, if for a PCVC while placing an order for July 2021, the 7-day duration selected by the PCVC will be from 10 June to 16 June and in that period, if 630 doses are shown on CoWIN as administered, the daily average number of doses will be 630/7 i.e 90.
Hence, the Maximum Order Quantity (MOQ) for the month of July 2021 = 90 x 30 x 2 = 5,400.
This procedure has already begun, however, the following advancements in the process to be followed by the hospitals for obtaining and supply of vaccines will start from July 1.
The PCVCs can order Covishield or Covaxin vaccines up to four instalments. While the payment has to be made within three days of the placement of the orders, which will be accepted only through the electronic or digital method, the SOP specified.
Aggregation of demand for vaccines will be done only for the Serum Institute's Covishield and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin.