The Union Health Ministry has decided the extent the vaccination drive to all residence of India above the age of 18+ in collaboration with private hospitals and the corporate world. While the vaccinations will continue to given free in government hospitals and primary health centres they will have to be paid for in private hospitals. Moreover in private hospitals you will have a choice of vaccines since permission has been granted for the Russian Sputnik and Pfizers Moderna in addition to covishield.
The cost of the vaccines in private hospitals will depend on which vaccine you chose, Pharma company will be allowed to sent 50% of their production to hospital chain like the Apollo group at prefixed prices for vaccination of people above 80.
It is unlikely however that apart from the corporate hospitals in Goa which include a Manipal, and Dona Paula Healthway in Old Goa, Victor in Margao and SMRC in Vasco many private hospitals will come forward to take up the offer of vaccinating young people. The only other other hospitals decides Manipal which does both testing and offers vaccination is the Campal Clinic at Campal.
The mass vaccination for all those above 18+ will start on May 1. Most of the smaller nursing homes in Goa are maternity hospitals and will not want to risk any infection to newly born kids and the parents due to the side effects of vaccination. We confirmed that none of the maternity homes like the CMM polyclinics, the Trinity Nursing home or even Kamat Hospital and Kedar Hospital which has now diversified into robotic surgery will be offering the vaccinations.
Similarly in Margao we understand that accept for Victor and possibly grace cardiac no other private hospitals will be offering vaccinations. IN Mapusa neither Vision hospital which is primarily an Opthomology or Mapusa clinic Galaxy hospital will be offering the vaccines.
The problem with offering the facility of vaccination is that the concern private equipment has to be equipped with isolation beds, oxygen and ICUs in incase of side effects following the vaccinations.
The consolation is that free vaccines will continue to available at Urban and primary health centres and in government hospitals in Goa. This will be in addition to existing vaccinations available for those or 45 and senior citizens.
The decision has been taken in view of the success of mass vaccination in the UK. Arvind Kejriwal has pointed out that the spike in hike in number of cases is primarily due to the 20-40 age group who have to go out to earn a leaving and support the family. Senior citizens may have retired and those over 45 may be at their end of their carrier it is the 18-40 group who are most likely to move out of the houses either to work or to have fun. In the UK following the vaccination 2/3rd of the population the number of covid cases has dropped from 50,000 per week to 500 per week.. Similar result have been achieved in the US. Indeed developed countries placed enough vaccines to cover their entire population.