-The Hindu ‘private hospitals procure vaccines directly from manufacturers, so no data available’ The Health Ministry says it does not know how many COVID-19 vaccines were procured by private players, nor does it have separate data on how many vaccine doses were administered by private hospitals and service providers, according to its response to a Right to Information request filed by Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd). Despite the fact that the government had reserved...

-TheWire.in The Union government may do well to appreciate that getting vaccinated and seeking private health care are two different issues and should not be conflated. When the Union government partially revised its vaccine allocation strategy on June 7, 2021, from a 50:25:25 ratio to a 75:25 ratio, it had offered a set of justifications to the Supreme Court. In its second affidavit submitted to the apex court on June 26, the Union...

-The Hindu Uptake from 25% allocation to private hospitals is less because of their low presence, CM tells PM Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday demanded an increase in the allocation of vaccines for the State to 95%, and a reduction in the share available to private hospitals to 5%, in order to speed up the COVID-19 inoculation drive in Odisha. In a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah...

The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...

-The Hindu In seeking to pursue conflicting objectives, the policy architecture is complex and difficult to implement Contrary to popular perception, public policies are made without full knowledge or facts. More often than not, they embody assumptions arising from experience, an understanding of history, and present conditions. Considering the vast sea of unknowns surrounding COVID-19, it would be understandable to place a greater reliance on historical experience. Instead, India’s vaccine policy appears...