After Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan announced that the vaccines against COVID-19 would be freely available in the first phase of inoculation drive, the social media started to praise the Centre for declaring the vaccines as free for all. Several posts claimed that while vaccines in the UK and the US are priced at Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000 for one shot, the ‘Modi government’ is providing the doses for free.

“We Indians are fortunate that we have Narendra Damodar Modi as our Prime Minister,” a misleading post reads on Twitter in Hindi. It has garnered over 1.7k likes and 570 retweets until now.

A similar post has also gone viral on Facebook. It has over 560 shares.

So what is the truth?

The Union government has no plans on providing the vaccine doses for free to everyone. On January 2, 2021, Vardhan made it clear that free vaccines are only reserved for 10 million healthcare workers and 20 million frontline workers. The Centre is yet to finalise the cost of the vaccines for other beneficiaries. 

Also read: India approves two COVID-19 vaccines today, what will happen next?

“In 1st phase of #COVID19Vaccination free #vaccine shall be provided across the nation to most prioritised beneficiaries that incl 1 crore healthcare & 2 crore frontline workers,” Vardhan tweeted with a video.

The 10 million healthcare employees working in both private and government hospitals will get the first doses, as per the direction by National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC).

The second group contains nearly 20 million frontline workers, including people associated with the police department, armed forces, home guard, disaster management and civil defence organisation, prison staff, municipal workers and revenue officials.

As far as the prices of vaccines are concerned, Bharat Biotech is yet to finalise the cost of Covaxin. The Covishield vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford will cost $3-4 per shot (RS 219-292) to the government, and will be sold at almost double the cost in private markets once sales open up, Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India (SII) said on Monday.

In the UK and the US, vaccines are being provided for free in public hospitals. The doses in Britain are available only through the National Health System.

The American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also clarified that the US government is buying the vaccines through the taxpayers’ money and will be administered to American people for free. However, vaccination providers can charge an administration fee for giving the shots.