Big pvt hospital cuts down on vax sites amid fewer takers

Pune: Low footfalls for vaccination and more government centres have started showing on private hospitals offering Covid-19 inoculation, prompting a big private hospital to reduce the number of sites. Another private health hub has similar plans in place.

Dr HK Sale, executive director of Noble Hospital, told TOI, “A lot of logistics are involved in conducting the vaccination drive, including manpower and vehicles, among others. With low footfalls and thousands of doses lying unused with us, we have decided to bring down the number of centres to just one. Like our routine paediatric vaccination centre, we will continue with one Covid vaccination centre for now. We had multiple centres earlier, two in Magarpatta city, one in Amanora city and three in the hospital campus, among others, which may no more function as vaccination sites.”

“If there is requirement, we will add more centres,” Dr Sale said.

A source from another city-based hospital said, “Footfalls for vaccination at private sites remain on the lower side, due to which one of our centres had to be taken off the drive. We then thought of diverting the manpower from another centre with lower footfall to another, which already was catering to a thousand people per day. There was 50% reduction in footfalls in the centre that had to be taken off the drive.”

Some other multi-centre private hospitals, however, said they did not plan to close down any vaccination sites as of now. Hospitals also said they had cut down on vaccine purchases by around 70% in July, owing to less demand at private sites. Some others have not placed any additional orders in July.

Bomi Bhote, CEO of Ruby Hall Clinic, said, “We are not buying the huge quantities of doses that we would buy initially, as there are now enough number of government centres to cater to the city’s vaccination demand. It is a resource intensive activity and a lot of manpower has to be diverted to vaccinations. With adequate vaccines at the government centres, we have tapered off our requirements, with almost a 70% reduction in the average vaccine orders this month.”

Dr Sale said till the existing stock was consumed, the hospital would not place any additional order.

Dr Jitendra Oswal, deputy medical director at Bharati Hospital, said, “We have 40,000 doses lying unused with us. This stock is likely to continue for over three months, so we do not wish to place any additional orders for some time now.”