The Hemant Soren government has asked many private healthcare facilities across Jharkhand to stop their vaccination drive against Covid-19, putting hundreds of beneficiaries awaiting their second jab in a fix.

Owners of private hospitals in the state said on Sunday that the state government also asked them to hand over their vaccine stocks without offering any explanation for doing so.

“We were asked to stop our vaccination drive in the last week of April, and by May 5, the government also asked us to surrender all the doses of vaccine we had in stock,” said Yogesh Gambhir, the owner of Ranchi-based Raj Hospital.

Gambhir, who is also President of the Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI), a conglomerate of private hospitals across India, expressed shock over the government’s decision at a time when the idea was to vaccinate as many people as possible at the earliest.

“We were not given any reason for the decision. But it is quite shocking since we need to vaccinate as many people as possible at the earliest given the situation of Covid-19 in the state, and shutting down vaccination centres in this time of crisis does not make any sense,” he said.

Several private hospitals have already administered the first dose of the vaccine to senior citizens and people above the age of 45 in the past couple of months. Now, most were flooded with queries from beneficiaries who were supposed to get their second jab in April-end and May, say hospital owners.

“The vaccination is temporarily closed in our hospital since May 1, but I think it will resume later this week. We are flooded with phone calls from beneficiaries seeking the second dose,” said spokesperson of Medanta Hospital in Ranchi Javed Ansari.

Beneficiaries are worried that vaccination centres will be overcrowded once the state starts vaccinating people in the age bracket of 18 to 44 years and thereby pose risk of infection if senior citizens and people with comorbidities visit the same centres to get their second jab.

“My second jab was due in the first week of May, but I could not get it at Raj Hospital, where I got the first dose. I am waiting for the vaccination to resume at private hospitals as I am afraid of visiting government facilities in the current situation,” said Poonam Jha, a resident of Pe Pee Compound in Ranchi.

State Health Secretary Arun Kumar Singh said that the decision was taken in accordance with the new policies of the Centre, but refused to divulge further details.

A highly placed source in the health department, however, said that private healthcare facilities will have to procure vaccines directly from the manufacturers as per the new strategy. The source said that the decision was taken in the wake of the depleting stock of vaccine in the state and high rate of wastage of vaccine in private facilities.

These developments come at a time when the state government has accused the Centre of being prejudiced against Jharkhand and not providing sufficient doses of vaccines to the state. The state is yet to begin vaccination for people in the age bracket of 18 years to 44 years despite the Centre opening immunisation for people in this group on May 1.

Earlier, state Health Minister Banna Gupta claimed that Jharkhand sought 25 lakh doses each of Covaxin and Covishield from manufacturers, but were denied supply as the Centre had already booked around 12 crore doses of vaccine in advance.

As per data with the state government, Jharkhand has been administering the first dose of the vaccine to around 10,000 beneficiaries every day and the second jab to around 15,000 beneficiaries on an average. However, experts from private hospitals have expressed concern over the slow rate of vaccination, fearing that vaccines may reach their expiry date as they have a shelf life of only three months.