Punjab Govt Under Fire Charges ‘Vaccine Scam’

Vaccine Scam-Punjab government directed all private hospitals to return all Covid-19 vaccine doses available with them.

Vaccine Scam: After facing severe backlash for allegedly selling Covaxin doses to private hospitals at over and above the prices they were procured from the Centre, the Capt Amarinder Singh-led Punjab government no Friday withdrew its previous order of providing single-dose vaccine doses to 18-44 years age group population through private hospitals.

A short letter – signed by Vikas Garg, chief of the vaccine COVID-19 – said the order was “not taken in the right spirit and is being revoked”. It has instructed private hospitals to return all available doses of vaccines. The doses they have used so far should also be returned, once they have received the items from the manufacturers, the notice said. Funds deposited by hospitals in the Vaccine Fund will be refunded, with an additional order.

Earlier today, the Punjab Health Minister, Barbir Singh Sidhu, ordered an investigation into allegations by the opposition party that the government had been distributing Covid vaccines to private hospitals.

Without going into details of the allegations, he said he would wait first for the whole picture to appear. “The Vaccine program does not affect my Department of Health and is under the Secretary-General and Vikas Garg, a government official in the vaccination campaign,” Sidhu said.

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SAD Alleges ‘Vaccien Scam’

His response was at the outset of allegations posed by Punjab’s opposition party SAD which accused the state’s Congress government of diverting Covid vaccines to private hospitals at hefty margins. Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, in a statement on Thursday alleged that vaccine doses were not available in the state but they were being sold to private institutions. 

In a series of Tweets, SAD chief claimed that a Covaxin dose costing Rs 400 to the state was being sold to private institutions at Rs 1,060. He further alleged that the private hospitals are further charging people Rs 1,560 for each dose. This amounts to a cost of Rs 6,000 to Rs 9,000 per family for a single dose. The government was also punishing people by forcing them to cough up Rs 1,560 per dose during a time of economic slowdown, Sukhbir Badal added. 

BJP Swipe at Conference on Civil War in Punjab

Responding to the ongoing debate, BJP leaders Prakash Javadekar and Anurag Thakur criticized the Punjab government and questioned whether the Punjab Congress party was committed to fighting the COVID-19 epidemic in the province.

Javadekar said Punjab was hit hard by the COVID-19 epidemic, there was no proper management of inoculation drive in the government. The state government is also not paying enough attention to testing and other measures that need to be taken to curb the spread, he said.

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