Policy paralysis and the pandemic

Policy mess seems to be taking place whether it be at the central level or the state level. Instead of focusing on what more is required to see that the country contains the spread of a possible third wave, an orchestrated capacity demonstration of administering 86 lakh doses of vaccine in the country took place on Monday. Such acts should stop. Let's be honest and let's not resort to playing number game.

If the country can really achieve such high targets in one day, India would soon be able to protect its people from the third or prospect of more waves which scientists say may come. One would really appreciate if the same pace was maintained for at least next one week or so. But that is not the situation.

A day after India administered about 86 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses, the vaccination drive took a hit on Tuesday when only 54.24 lakh people were vaccinated against the Covid-19. The significant drop in vaccination makes it clear that such large scale vaccination drive is not sustainable.

According to the data by the Union Health Ministry, around 54.4 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered across the country. Of the total, 32,81,562 vaccine doses were administered as the first dose and 71,655 vaccine doses given as the second dose in the age group 18-44 years.

Cumulatively, over 6,55,38,687 people in the same age group across 37 states and UTs have received their first dose and over 14,24,612 have received their second dose since the start of Phase-3 of the vaccination drive. States like Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh which claimed to have recorded maximum number of inoculations have cut back drastically on daily vaccinations which is said to be below 5,000 doses.

Official figures say that when capacity demonstration took place on Monday, nearly 64 per cent of the doses were administered in rural areas and nearly 65,000 of total 67,000 vaccination centres were government facilities, while women comprised about 46 per cent of total recipients. About 12 crore vaccine doses are available for June, 9.5 crore doses have already been exhausted, which leaves only about 2.5 crore doses for eight days. If this is not skewed what is it?

Officials have themselves said that it is not possible to maintain the same pace in future. Government's own figures indicate that there is steep gap between supply and demand. States like Telangana have been alleging that they are not getting enough supplies to put the vaccination programme on fast track.

Another disturbing factor is that the centre telling the supreme court that it cannot pay Rs 4 lakh compensation to the families of those who died of Covid. Government figures say that there are about 5 lakh deaths due to Covid. If it has to pay Rs 4 lakh per person it would require about Rs 20,000 crore. This hardly works out to about one percent of India's GDP.

Is India such a poor country that it can't afford it?

On the one hand the Centre and States have failed to come up with strict guidelines to be followed by Covid hospitals in private sector. Though some states announced the tariff to be charged by private hospitals, no mechanism to monitor it has been created. The Centre on its part could not ensure that all private hospitals accept health insurance policies.

Most of the hospitals refused to accept the policies saying Covid is 'God's Act' and hence insurance is not applicable. Now the centre says it cannot pay compensation of even Rs 4 lakhs. If Covid had left people in a mess, the union and state governments seem to be pushing themselves into policy mess.