Getting a jab at private hospitals in Karnataka is going to take longer as they are still negotiating with vaccine manufacturers to procure vaccines.
Barring a few hospitals, the majority of the hospitals stopped vaccination on May 1 as they stopped receiving the doses from the government.
H.M. Prasanna, president, Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes’ Association (PHANA), who are trying to procure vaccines for all the private hospitals in the city, said that they are likely to take at least another one-and-a-half months to get their supply of vaccine. He said that they had got in touch with Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech, and Reddy’s Lab.
Many hospital management say that they are hassled as people have been turning up at the hospitals after booking appointments on the CoWIN portal. “We do not have a stock of vaccines but they book appointments on the CoWIN portal. They turn up at the gate and when we inform them that we do not have any stock of the vaccine, they become abusive,” a hospital management member stated.
However, many hospital managements are trying to directly get in touch with vaccine manufacturers and are hoping to get vaccine stock in a week or two.
“We were left in a spot early this week as we did not get enough time to get in touch with vaccine manufacturers and were left scrambling for vaccine stock,” a board member of a hospital management said.