Most private hospitals in Kolkata are saddled with thousands of Covid vaccine doses as the number of recipients at their clinics has dropped appreciably compared with two months ago.
As a result, many unopened vials will reach their use-by dates soon.
Several hospitals have reduced the prices of the vaccines and are even offering to administer the doses for free to prevent wastage.
Some have stopped ordering vaccines, while others are ordering almost a tenth of the doses they would buy when the demand was at its peak a few months ago.
The hospitals had said in May that it was taking more than a month after placing orders to get supplies. Now, consignments come within a week of placing orders but demands have severely dwindled.
The private vaccination centres were allowed to charge up to Rs 850 for a dose of Covishield and Rs 1,500 for a dose of Covaxin. A few hospitals are now charging Rs 630 for a dose of Covishield, which is roughly the cost of procurement.
“Our main concern is with the Covaxin stock as the doses have to be administered by November. There are very few takers for Covaxin now,” said Sudipta Mitra, chief executive of Peerless Hospital.
The hospital has a stock of more than 7,000 doses of Covaxin and there are barely 20 recipients of the vaccine daily. The 12,000-odd Covishield doses will have to be administered by March.
“We had last procured vaccines in July. No fresh order has been placed since,” Mitra said. The hospital, he said, is administering 200 doses daily on an average, compared with 700 in May.
The hospital will decide what to do with the excess stock closer to the use-by date.
The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has around 12,000 doses of Covishield left.
“In April and May, there was a huge problem in procuring vaccines. The state government had offered help. But now the situation has changed. The procurement process is much faster but the demand has gone down,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, which runs the RN Tagore hospital.
Venkatesh said the demand had gone down from around 600 doses daily a few months ago to 300. “We are planning free community vaccine drives,” he said.
Officials at multiple private hospitals said many people were preferring to get vaccinated at government hospitals, where jabs are free.
The CEO of a private hospital said that earlier people would send drivers and domestic help to get vaccinated at their hospital. Now, those people are queueing up at government clinics and hospitals for the second dose.
The AMRI group was administering 8,000 doses daily on an average from its three units in Calcutta as well as at off-site camps, including the ones at residential complexes. The count has since come down to 600.
“Out of the 600, only 15 to 20 are Covaxin recipients. We have 4,500 doses of Covaxin and 17,000 doses of Covishield,” said Rupak Barua, group CEO of AMRI. The Covaxin doses cannot be used after November.
The group would earlier place orders for one lakh doses of Covid vaccines. Three weeks back, it had ordered 10,000 doses.
The group is planning free vaccination in slums.