New Delhi: Private Hospitals will no longer be able to directly procure COVID-19 vaccine supplies from manufacturers and will have to place their orders through the Government’s CoWIN platform.

“Yes, they will need to procure through Co-WIN; it is being made a simple and transparent process,” said a senior Union Health Ministry official on condition of anonymity. CoWIN is the backbone of the national COVID immunisation delivery management system.

The new procurement process will be operational from tomorrow (July 1). There will be a slot on CoWIN for Private Hospitals to register as private COVID vaccination centres to be able to avail of the facility.

The approval will be granted on CoWIN itself and the payment for vaccine doses will also have to be made electronically through the National Health Authority Portal (NHA), after which the order will be processed.

The Centre is procuring 75 percent of the vaccine supplies produced in a given month to be distributed under its free supply scheme and the remaining 25 percent is left to be taken up by the Private Hospitals across the country based on doses allocated in advance.

The step was taken after a huge disparity was seen in the private sector with vaccination largely limited to big private vaccination centres that tend to buy a major volume from the available 25 percent quota allotted to the private sector.