Tuesday, 25 May 2021 | Pioneer
It is the Centre’s duty to make available the anti-COVID jabs to all the States
COVID-19 is a national disaster. There is a national task force in place handling the pandemic centrally. However, when it comes to the procurement of vaccines, the one and only element to fight the virus with, it is being done in a decentralised manner, with the Centre and the States both in a race to get hold of as many doses as they can from the market, even from abroad. Why is procurement not a national task being taken up by the Centre? The question has been doing the rounds since the third phase of the Government’s vaccine policy was announced earlier this month. Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia made a pertinent point to bring out the pointlessness of such an exercise when he asked rhetorically what if the States asked the districts to procure their own vaccines, just like the Centre is asking the States to? The Chief Minister of Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh, has already said that US pharma giant Moderna has refused to supply the vaccine directly to the State, saying it deals with requests only from the Government of India and not from the States or private companies. The Supreme Court a fortnight ago asked the Centre why cannot it buy 100 per cent of the requirement and why cannot the Centre follow the national immunisation programme policy with respect to the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines?
The control of infectious diseases falls in the Concurrent List and is, therefore, said to be a shared responsibility between the Centre and the States; that is how the former’s argument goes. However, former Health Secretary K Sujatha Rao pointed out that all these years, the Union Government was supplying vaccines and drugs to the States under the National Programme and that it was for the first time that the Centre was leaving the States alone to buy vaccines on their own and at a price to be determined by the manufacturers. The Centre is the nodal agency to facilitate nearly all aspects of vaccination. It is the Centre, not the States, that can persuade the United States for the raw materials; can help the suppliers expand production capacity; approve more vaccines and balance the domestic supply with obligations of the Indian manufacturers under Covax. Procuring vaccines is a logical extension of the Centre’s job. The current policy has created a divide of sorts: The Centre lowered the threshold age for vaccination to 18 years but will not vaccinate the nearly 90 crore people in the 18-45 age group. It is left to the States while the Centre takes care of the older, high-risk categories. Where will that leave Punjab? Where will that leave the other States if the rest of the pharma companies react like Moderna? The vaccination, obviously, cannot stop. The Centre will then be forced to retract its policy; something it can do voluntarily and without compulsion today.
