Covid vaccines should be made accessible to and affordable for all and the governments should ensure that by working closely with organisations like neighbourhood clubs and NGOs, public health experts said.

The vaccines should be made affordable so that the maximum number of people can be protected against Covid, the experts said.

“The vaccines are now accessible to only a few because of supply issues. Also, some corporate hospitals are buying doses in bulk. The prices are varying, too. Accessibility and affordability are two areas of concern,” said public health expert Abhijit Chowdhury.

“Covid vaccination cannot be a source of profiteering and the government should come forward and fix the price, like it has done for the RT-PCR test and the rates for PPE kits at hospitals,” said Chowdhury, the chief advisor of Liver Foundation and mentor of Covid Care Network, which has as its members doctors, health officials and people who have recovered from Covid.

The two organisations, along with the state government, have launched a vaccine access initiative. They will try to provide doses to those who are unable to get them because of social, economic and other reasons.

“With the help of local clubs, NGOs, community-based organisations and councillors, we are trying to hold off-site vaccination programmes in neighbourhoods. These organisations will be asked to bring those who are unable to queue up at vaccination centres to these camps. The state government will provide the doses for free,” said Chowdhury.

The programme will start next week in districts and then in Calcutta.

He urged the private healthcare sector to join the effort to provide vaccines to people at as low a price as possible.

Liver Foundation, which runs a hospital in Sonarpur, on the southern fringes of Calcutta, is planning to ad-minister Covid vaccines and charge not more than Rs 100 over the procurement price.

A private hospital in Calcutta — the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences — started administering Covishield at the procurement price on Wednesday. The hospital is charging each recipient Rs 630, which its officials said was the cost of procuring a Covishield dose from the manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India.

“For the first few days after procuring the doses, we were charging Rs 750. But now we have decided to charge only the cost price to make it affordable for more people,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east. Narayana Health, of which the Mukundapur hospital is the flagship unit.

He said the hospital would charge the procurement cost for Covaxin, too, once it got supplies of the indigenously developed vaccine.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the hospital vaccinated around 2,000 people each day.

The association of private hospitals in Calcutta has requested its members not to charge more than Rs 220 for each dose and keep the rates uniform.

“The amount was fixed to cover the infrastructure and human resource costs. Some of the hospitals are charging more but most members are adhering to it,” said Rupak Barua, the president of the Association of Hospitals of Eastern India and the group CEO of AMRI Hospitals.