Vaccination: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw says pvt hospitals should be allowed a little higher service charge for off-site camps

founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has felt private hospitals should be allowed to collect a slightly higher service charge for vaccination camps conducted outside. The Centre has capped the service charge at Rs 150 which she felt would work well within a hospital facility, but not for off-site camps.

Shaw, in a chat with ET, hailed the new vaccination strategy announced by prime minister Narendra Modi on Monday by which the Centre will procure the Covid-19 vaccines from manufacturers and give them to states to inoculate 18+ age group people for free from June 21. She called the new approach a "good course correction in removing the ambiguity of multiple pricing."

"It is good to have a simple two-pricing structure, one for the government and another for the private sector. The centralised procurement will allow states to focus just on vaccination rather than getting into bidding processes and procuring vaccines from manufacturers which is not their job, the Biocon founder said.

The States should focus only on vaccine deployment, she said.

Shaw said she hopes the Centre would support States with a transparent allocation and give them a weekly supply schedule on how many shots they would get every week so that they can plan and go about the vaccination campaign efficiently.