PUNE: The announcement of free vaccines for the 18-plus at civic-run centres has freed up hundreds of slots across private hospital sites, where beneficiaries have to pay for the shots.
In the PMR, the PMC is set to start the free drive for the 18-plus from Wednesday.
On Tuesday, citizens tracking vaccine availability across Pune said slots at private hospitals were now taking hours to be booked, instead of seconds, which was the trend some days ago.
A search on CoWin showed that out of the 51 paid vaccination sites in Pune district, 14 had several slots open for bookings on Tuesday.
Some sites even had a few hundred vacant slots.
Suchdeep Juneja, who started mhVaccineTracker for Maharashtra, said, “The number of slots at private sites significantly increased after June 21 night.
It seems people in the 18-plus group seem to be waiting for the free drive at civic-run sites across the state.” Juneja said a private site in Pune city on Monday opened 2,000 paid slots for June 22 at 8:19pm.
“Till 11am on Tuesday, that site still had 1,600 vacant slots.
That was not the case until recently when those slots would get booked in seconds,” he said.
Sources from the central government said the availability of more slots, for longer, also indicated improved vaccine supply to the district.
But a senior health ministry official said, “This is because we have also made a minimum 50% online capacity (those booking via CoWin) mandatory for government sites in urban areas.
Slot availability at private sites has also improved because some are turning to government centres for their vaccines.” Dr Dhananjay Kelkar, medical director of Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, said: “People who can afford paid shots should take them from private hospitals for two reasons: government is still allowing vaccine manufacturers to sell doses to private sites.
Two, the cost of vaccination in private sites is minimal, so, free doses should be left for people from lower income groups and those in economic difficulty.” Sanil Mahajan, a city-based working professional who has been helping friends with CoWin appointments, said bookings have become easier to make.
“Recently, I struggled to get my domestic help a vaccine slot.
It took me at least three days to get an appointment.
But in the last 48 hours, hundreds of slots have opened up at private sites.
And they continue to show as available even after 6pm.” A 19-year-old Kondhwa resident said, “On Monday, I immediately found slots at nearly 20 private hospitals.
I had been trying to get an appointment for days.” Berty Thomas, a programmer who developed ‘under45.in’, a vaccine slot-tracking website said, “In Bengaluru too, ever since the Centre announced free vaccines for everyone over 18, there has been a drop in demand for jabs at private centres.” Ankita Garg, co-founder of Questrack app, which lets users filter alerts by vaccine price and pin code, said, “Our latest app usage data, on how users from metros are filtering their alerts, has shown that about 43% of people are not interested in paid vaccination slots anymore.” In Mumbai too, Lilavati Hospital, which opened 600 slots at 6pm on Tuesday, had around 450 available even after an hour.
On Monday, when a private centre in Borivli opened 2,000 slots for Tuesday, as many as 1,500 slots were available 24 hours later.
On the contrary, government centres for the 30+ category in Mumbai went red within minutes of opening.
(With inputs from Yogita Rao in Mumbai)