The Centre so far has used nearly 73 per cent of the total budget allocated for COVID-19 vaccination in the current fiscal, majority of which has gone to Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII), whose vaccine against coronavirus -Covishield- has been the lynchpin of the country’s immunisation drive.
For the financial year 2021-22, the government had originally planned to spend Rs 35,000 crore on Covid-19 vaccination which was later revised to Rs 39,000 crore.
A response to an RTI query, accessed by Moneycontrol, on the Centre’s expenses on COVID vaccine—through a subsidiary under the health ministry, HLL Lifecare Ltd- shows that the government had spent a total of Rs 28,436 crore till January 28 this year.
Of this amount, Rs 23,644.54 crore -- or 60.6 per cent -- has been released to SII for procurement or purchase of Covishield while Rs 3,301.04 crore or 8.4 per cent has been paid to Bharat Biotech for Covaxin.
In addition, the government had made an advance payment of Rs 1,500 crore to Hyderabad-based vaccine maker Biological E for Corbevax which was granted emergency use authorisation in October last year but is yet to be included in the country’s inoculation drive against coronavirus.
These payments to three companies mean that the government still has Rs 10,564 crore left for procuring vaccines in the current fiscal even as the government has proposed to spend only Rs 5,000 crore on COVID vaccination support to states for 2022-23.
On February 2, Ahmedabad-based Zydus, whose COVID vaccine ZyCoV-D too has been given restricted use permission, announced that it has supplied first batches of the vaccine to the government, but it is not clear yet how much has the Centre paid to the company towards the procurement.
Meanwhile, the low allocation for COVID-19 vaccination in the coming financial year, as laid out in budget 2022, has triggered concerns that the government may allow companies to freely sell their vaccines in the private market, especially if booster doses for wider groups of population are permitted.
As of now, booster or precaution doses in India are permitted only for healthcare, frontline workers and those above 60 with comorbidities.
The government last month also allowed COVID vaccination for the 15–17-year age group and there are now demands from various sections to lower this age criterion further so that kids too can be inoculated against coronavirus.
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