Calling for expanding the private health sector, V K Paul, member-health NITI Aayog, said on Wednesday that the growth in private health space had been static at a time when the health infrastructure needs to be ramped up in the country.

       He said schemes such as the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission are a game changer and private hospitals must join the programme. “I request you to introspect and think. We have to. Can we look at what models in the private sector should now emerge?” Paul added.

       The Prime Minister Jan Arogya Yojana would increase its ambit. “PM JAY is here to stay, and it is the main vehicle for secondary and tertiary care and therefore we have to reposition ourselves to align with this.”

       He said the model should shift from high return, low volume to a high volume and modest return. “Let us not have the people of India be left out of this universal health coverage because we cannot set the machine right. Let’s together set it right, reposition and refine the scheme,” Paul said.

       Praising the private sector hospitals for their work during the pandemic, Paul said that even though the public sector did its part, the best critical care across the nation often came from the private sector.

       He asked the private sector to visualise the next six or nine months to build important building blocks for improving the health infrastructure of the country.

       The country has one hospital bed per thousand. It has to be increased to at least 2 hospital beds per thousand, he said.

       He called on the state governments to increase their budgets on health care — from the current 4-4.5 per cent to almost 8 per cent.

       Asking companies to send suggestions for the upcoming Budget, he said: “We are together to see that the health sector receives allocation in the spending paradigm of state and centre.”

       Newer vaccines

       Experts feel that one needs to prepare for the future waves of the coronavirus pandemic — multivalent Covid vaccines are in the works already. A big positive is that no vaccine is completely failing against any particular strain. “However, nowhere in the world do we have the original strain in circulation now,” said Gagandeep Kang, microbiologist and professor at Christian Medical College, Vellore.

       She added that as for future preparedness against evolving strains of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, one can vaccinate a person with one dose of a vaccine based on the original strain (current vaccines in use are based on the original Wuhan strain of Sars-CoV-2), and a second dose of a vaccine based on one of the newer versions of the virus.

       Such a multivalent approach would give reasonable immunity against different strains of the virus. These are called Wave 2 vaccines, and these are already in the works, she said.

       The scientific community is also thinking about Wave 3 vaccines — where a single dose would give long-term immunity and broader coverage against various strains, Kang said.

       N K Arora, chief of National Immunization Technical Advisory Group, pointed out that while the gap between the earlier pandemic and this one is 100 years, the next pandemic could be much earlier.

       Arora also said that children play a role in transmission of the virus, and thus they need to be vaccinated.

       “Prioritisation should be co-morbid children, and all adverse events need to be monitored very carefully and closely. We cannot stop vaccinating children because we do not have data,” Arora said.