Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that Covid-19 vaccinations will be free for all Indians above 18 and that the Central government will take over the task of procuring vaccines from both foreign and Indian manufacturers.

The prime minister said 75 per cent of all vaccines produced would be passed on to the state governments free of charge and the other 25 per cent of vaccines will be sold to private hospitals which will have to deliver it at a fixed price plus a service charge of Rs 150.

Considerable chaos had broken out in recent weeks after the Centre handed over the task of procuring and delivering vaccines to the different state governments. The states floated global tenders but discovered that foreign manufacturers, which are snowed under with demands for vaccines, refused to deal with anyone except the Central government.

States like West Bengal had been demanding that vaccinations should be free, but the Centre had been resisting this call for several months, partly because of the huge cost involved.

The new vaccination scheme will come into effect two weeks from now on June 21.

The Prime Minister said that vaccine supply would increase in coming weeks and that seven companies were producing vaccines or at advanced stages of trials. The products being put on trial include a nasal vaccine which would be one of the first of its kind to be developed globally.

India’s vaccination programme is far behind schedule and that situation is unlikely to change in next two to three months, at the very least.

Modi began his 35-minute broadcast by defending the government’s efforts to control the pandemic and how it had tried to control the highly infectious second wave.

“This is the deadliest pandemic in the last 100 years. The modern world has not seen such a pandemic. Our country has fought this pandemic at many levels,” Modi said.

Modi congratulated all Indians for the way they had battled the disease. He also pointed to the way medical oxygen production had been hiked by around 10 times when shortages built up during the deadly second wave.

He added that a new health infrastructure had been developed in the last 15 months since the pandemic first began. “We ran Oxygen Express (trains), IAF and Navy were involved. The production was increased tenfold,” the Prime Minister said.

The government’s about turn came in the wake of being asked by the Supreme Court for a "vaccine roadmap". The bench led by Justice D. Y. Chandrachud had asked the government to undertake a "fresh review of its vaccination policy addressing the concerns raised.” It pointed out that asking people between the age of 18-44 to pay for the vaccine was "prima facie arbitrary and irrational".

The Prime Minister also announced that around 800 million poorer people will be offered free ration untill Diwali under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.

Modi also stressed his government’s successes and pointed out healthcare workers had almost all been vaccinated when the second wave began and that this had helped enormously. He warned, however, that people should not lower their guard.

The government had, the Prime Minister said, changed the way of procuring and delivering the vaccines. “We changed the way vaccinations were done. So, we gave 25 per cent of the work to states. Now they have started to realise the difficulty the work involves.”

Overall reaction to the Prime Minister’s speech was favourable since most medical experts and others have been demanding that the government do all the buying and also offer free vaccinations to all who want it.