The Kerala government on Wednesday decided to purchase one crore doses of Covid vaccines following the Centre’s decision not to supply free vaccines to states.

The state cabinet’s decision would help ease the severe shortage of vaccines that the state has been experiencing owing to the inadequate supply by the Centre.

The state cabinet decided to purchase 70 lakh doses of Covishield, the Oxford-AztraZeneca vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India, and 30 lakh doses of Covaxin, the indigenous vaccine made by Bharat Biotech.

The state with a population of 3.5 crore has already vaccinated over 71 lakh people of whom close to 60 lakh have received both doses.

Efforts are on to procure 10 lakh doses in the beginning of May considering the spike in demand as the 18-44 age group would become eligible for jabs.

While private hospitals are allowed to charge for the doses they administer, the state government had announced it would continue to provide free vaccines at all state-run hospitals and vaccination centres.

This followed a controversial vaccine regime announced by the Union government under which vaccine makers would have to provide 50 per cent of their supplies to the Central Drugs Laboratory, leaving the remaining to be sold to state governments and private hospitals.

State government sources said negotiations were on to get a steady supply of vaccines from both companies to ensure the inoculation programme doesn’t suffer due to shortage. An estimated Rs 1,300 crore would be required to provide free vaccination at government facilities.

In a controversial pricing strategy, Serum Institute of India had announced that Covishield would be sold for Rs 150 per dose to the Centre, Rs 400 to state governments and Rs 600 to private hospitals. While Bharat Biotech has made available its Covaxin at Rs 150 per dose to the central government, state governments would have to pay Rs 600 for the same dose while it would cost Rs 1,200 for private hospitals.

Amid widespread accusations of profiteering, the Centre had on Monday urged the two companies to cut their costs.

The Kerala government had faced criticism for allowing people to crowd at vaccination centres. Unruly scenes of even senior citizens being made to stand in long queues for hours, only to be told to come another day, have put the government under pressure. But the state government had squarely blamed the Union government for the vaccine shortage.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan had on Tuesday confirmed that people were not getting slots on CoWin application due to the vaccine shortage. As of Tuesday evening, the state had only 3,68,840 doses of vaccine left with it.

Vijayan had clarified that vaccine slots can be opened only based on the stock available in the state. “That is why we had asked for 50 lakh doses,” he had said.

A large number of senior citizens are waiting for their second dose in the state that had initially received free vaccines from the Centre. Vijayan had recently written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking free vaccines after the Centre announced that states must buy their stocks by directly negotiating with vaccine makers.

All the state ministers decided to contribute their one month’s salary to the Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund for purchasing vaccines.