Fact-Check: Misleading Claim ‘vaccine for all, free vaccine’ by the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya

A tweet got viral of Mansukh Mandaviya who is serving as Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Chemical and Fertilizers of India. He called for a major push to the COVID-19 vaccinations drive during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday on Friday, 17^th Sept, saying it would be a perfect gift for him.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a gift of ‘vaccine for all, free vaccine’ to the country. Tomorrow is the birthday of our beloved prime minister, let’s do #VaccineSeva by helping all unvaccinated people including their loved ones, family members and all sections of the society by getting them vaccinated. This would be a birthday gift for the prime minister,” read the tweet in Hindi on Thursday, 16^th Sept.

This tweet of him got huge Retweets of 952 and was liked by 4,489 users.

Fact Check:

After doing some research on this by our team we found out that this tweet of MP Mansukh Mandaviya is considered as misleading as vaccines are not free in the private hospitals.

Private hospitals can charge a maximum of ₹780 for Covishield, ₹1,410 for Covaxin and ₹1,145 for Sputnik V as announced by the Centre. The Centre also said that private hospitals can charge upto ₹150 on service charges and the state government will monitor the prices being charged.

The news on costs of vaccines was also published by The Hindustan Times and Economic Times.

DFRAC Editor

Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

See author's posts