India’s Covid vaccine rollout favours the wealthy and tech-savvy

When all Indian adults became eligible for Covid-19 vaccinations on May 1, Postcard Hotels & Resorts, a boutique hotel chain, swung into action to get its staff inoculated. Managers scoured the country’s online jab-booking platform, Co-win, to secure appointments. Hotel cars ferried workers to clinics as far as two hours away. The company paid for the inoculations, some of which cost as much as Rs1,300 (£13) per dose.

Within a week, 200 employees had received a first dose. “We ran it like an army operation,” said Kapil Chopra, the company’s founder and chief executive. “I did it for the safety of my team, which is in the line of fire.”

As India reels from a Covid-19 wave that has killed at least 140,000 people in two months, many are seeking vaccinations as protection against the highly infectious variants of Sars-Cov-2 now circulating widely in the country.

But with jabs scarce, affluent citizens and powerful companies — and those who work for them — are getting easier access to vaccines, based on their ability to pay, their tech savviness and their connections to large private hospitals.

“This is India’s feudal system,” said Leena Menghaney, a public health lawyer. “The rich in India always get anything first. It is very elitist . . . Those with connections and digital tools, who are educated enough and smart enough to work the system, are able to get the vaccine.”

India has administered 200m doses — or about 14 per 100 people — since mid-January, a sluggish pace compared with past vaccination campaigns. India recently inoculated 110m children against polio in just three days.

But India’s Covid-19 vaccine push is constrained by a severe shortage of jabs, stemming from a failure to secure supplies because of misplaced confidence that the virus was under control. Narendra Modi’s government only placed its first vaccine order in January — and for just 16.5m doses.

“There was a complacency that this epidemic was extinguished,” said Swarup Sarkar, a member of the Indian Council of Medical Research’s Covid-19 taskforce. “The need for vaccines was not felt.”

With limited vaccine stocks, India initially prioritised those most vulnerable to severe Covid-19, based on age and health criteria. The government bought vaccines from two domestic manufacturers, and administered them free at public hospitals, or for Rs250 at private hospitals.

But as coronavirus cases — and vaccine demand — surged last month, New Delhi changed tack. Denying any shortage, Modi’s government opened vaccination to all adults, touting a “liberalised and accelerated” inoculation strategy.

With this, New Delhi renounced responsibility for vaccinating Indians below the age of 45, and told states to procure jabs for that cohort themselves. It also allowed vaccine-makers to sell 25 per cent of their output to private hospitals — at much higher prices.

Harsh Vardhan, the health minister, said the policy would “empower a large number of people to get themselves quickly vaccinated” at their own expense. “In essence, those who can afford to get (jabs) at the private and corporate sector rates shall go ahead,” he added.

Today, private hospitals are offering vaccination camps in corporate offices, factories, five-star hotels and elite residential areas, where affluent Indians and companies may pay about Rs1,700 for a single jab for themselves and their employees.

Meanwhile, many government vaccination centres, which offer free jabs, are shut down because of lack of supply. Government clinics in rural areas have been deluged with tech-savvy urban youths using the Co-win app to secure inoculations, while less sophisticated locals are shut out.

Experts say such favouring of the rich — instead of scientifically allocating scarce vaccines where they are needed most — will exacerbate existing social inequities and defies public health principles.

“It’s a complete disaster,” said Murali Neelakantan, former general counsel to Cipla, a large Indian pharmaceutical company. “There are no vaccines to give out free because the rich are taking them. In no other part of the world could you justify any aspect of this.”