Healthcare aggregators such as 1mg, Pharmeasy and Medibuddy among others are gearing up to rapidly expand the country’s vaccination drive for people over 18 years against Covid-19 by taking it to neighbourhood clinics and dispensaries, apartment complexes and office campuses even in smaller towns.
These companies have begun talks with vaccine manufacturers for supplies ahead of the drive from May 1, even as the country is facing a massive surge in cases in the second wave. They are also in talks with the government vaccination technology platform CoWin to ensure that their systems are integrated and all inoculations are counted, industry executives told ET.
The onboarding of these firms which have built up a huge network of doctors, clinics and healthcare workers across the country will significantly expand the drive to beyond the 70,000 government and 7,000 private centres offering the jab currently.
Talking to ET, 1mg founder Prashant Tandon said that vaccination needs to be a “neighbourhood activity right now”.
“The major hospitals in the country are overburdened right now and network providers like us have a huge role to play in this.” He added that people can book through portals like theirs, which will guide them to the nearest clinic or lab for the jab.
1mg, which has over 150 million customers on its platform, is in talks with corporates and big housing societies to set up vaccination camps.
“We will like to also start home vaccinations since many people either can’t step out or don’t want to go out due to the virus spread.” However, more clarity is needed on that front, he added.
The health care firms apart from large hospital chains have been asking the government to open up integration of the Cowin platform with their systems, said a government official.
“We already have a cold chain set up across 30 odd cities and have trained manpower to administer the vaccine. The idea is to procure directly and set up camps in large corporates, factories and housing complexes,” Meena Ganesh, MD & CEO of home healthcare provider, Portea Medical said adding that they already have the experience of providing the vaccination for flu across the country.
Ganesh, whose firm has already begun discussions with vaccine suppliers said that the main challenge before them is the supply constraint of vaccines.
The government is liberalising the integration of the COWIN platform for private hospitals, healthcare providers and network aggregators after allowing private healthcare companies to source the vaccine directly from the suppliers. The new regime will allow private agencies to schedule vaccination on their own apps or portals.
“They will have all flexibility to choose their supplier, number of doses, areas of operation, time schedule etc. The only place where integration with the government’s common platform Cowin will be required will be for issuing vaccination certificates. They will also have to push the data on the common database since the government would like to have real time on vaccination status,” said an official who did not wish to be named.
Pharmeasy, which has over 100 million customers on its platform, looks to leverage its scale to source vaccines from suppliers. “More than million customers have locked in demand for vaccines with us. It is larger groups as well as corporates,” said Dharmil Sheth, CEO of Pharmeasy. “We will be able to provide over 5 million customers in the next couple of months”. It plans to conduct vaccination camps; connect its customers to nearby vaccination centres and tap the opportunity to supply vaccines to nursing homes and doctors in 12 cities and later expand to 25-30 cities.
Satish Kannan, CEO of MediBuddy said that there are a significant number of customers across the country who have already expressed interest in getting vaccinated through MediBuddy, which has expertise in administering over 10 lakh vaccinations for flu over the last three years.
“The concern right now is on the huge supply shortage of the vaccine but I think initially there will be some challenges around supply but it will slowly ease out,” he said adding that pricing should not be an issue since pricing in a way is fixed by the govt and “market correction will take care of overpricing concerns” after many players jump into the fray just like it happened in the case with RT-PCR tests.
So far, a total of 132 million vaccination doses have been given since January out of which 18.9 million comprise the second dose.
