Booster Vaccine Dose For All Indian: Rs 150 Maximum Service Fees Allowed For Hospitals By Govt

A day before making the precaution or booster dose available to all adults, the government said that private vaccination centres can charge a maximum of Rs 150 as service charge over and above the vaccine cost.

Slashed Vaccine Prices

The Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech – makers of Covishield and Covaxin have slashed prices of their respective vaccines for private hospitals.

Both will now cost ?225 per dose.

Earlier, Covishield used to cost ?600 per dose and Covaxin ?1,200 per dose.

SII said that it has reduced the cost for private hospitals from ?600 to ?225 per dose after discussion with the central government.

Bharat Biotech co-founder Suchitra Ella also confirmed that it reduced the price of Covaxin to ?225 per dose from ?1,200, also after consultation with the central government.

Place Of Availability

Healthcare workers, frontline workers and those above 60 years will receive the dose for free at government centres.

The rest will have to get the dose at private centres which will be a paid service.

The precaution dose is also to be the same as the one administered for the first and second doses, also known as homologous vaccination.

So those who received two doses of Covishield will have to take Covishield as the third dose.

Those eligible must be over 18 years and 9 months must have passed since their second dose. 

No New Registration Required

Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that fresh registrations will not be needed since beneficiaries are already registered on CoWin.

All vaccinations must be mandatorily recorded on the portal.

The private centres will also have to provide details about the available stock and the price per dose on CoWin.

Online Or Walk-In Appointment

At the private centres beneficiaries can choose between online appointment and walk-in vaccination.

In case of walk-in vaccination, the centres can locate the existing vaccination record of the beneficiary by searching through the mobile number, beneficiary reference ID or the details of the ID card used at the time of earlier doses.

Vaxx Certificate

Beneficiaries will receive confirmation SMS through the CoWin platform after receiving the third dose.

The vaccinator will have to check whether the beneficiary has received the SMS after which they will generate the certificate.

The certificate can also be downloaded by logging in to the CoWin platform or through DigiLocker or Aarogya Setu apps.