COVID-19 vaccination: Good news for employees of this IT firm

New Delhi: French IT major Capgemini on March 4 said it will cover the cost of the COVID-19 vaccination for all eligible employees and their dependents.

In a statement, Capgemini said health and well-being of its colleagues is the highest priority for the company and that it will cover the cost of coronavirus vaccines of all eligible employees and their dependents in strict accordance with all government-approved protocols.

“Adhering to the government protocols, Capgemini will cover the cost of the vaccination for all the eligible employees and their dependents who are part of our medical benefits programme,” Ashwin Yardi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Capgemini in India, said.

Capgemini India has also joined hands with competent wellness partners to assist its team members with any queries related to the vaccine including, do’s and don’ts, and provide answers to any medical queries that the employee and their dependents may have.

People above 60 years of age and those above 45 years with co-morbidities are being immunised in the second phase of nationwide vaccination that started on March 1.

Vineet Agrawal, CEO of Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting and Executive Director of Wipro Enterprises, said as the vaccination gets rolled out to more people in the country, the company will either tie-up with partners or reimburse employees.

“It depends on how it moves up—as of now its just over 60 and people with co-morbid conditions between 45-60 but since we don’t have employees over 60, we haven’t started but we will definitely start getting people vaccinated as soon as it opens to eligible people within India also,” he said.

Agrawal noted that as of now, the company has decided to cover the employees only.

“As of now, we’ve taken a call for employees being covered by our scheme, but in certain cases, we have taken insurances, which covers immediate families, so that you get covered. We have not taken a full call as far as family is concerned at this stage,” he said.

On March 4, Infosys and tech giant Accenture had said they will cover COVID vaccination costs of their employees in India.

Infosys co-founders N R Narayana Murthy and Kris Gopalakrishnan, and Kotak Mahindra Bank Managing Director and CEO Uday Kotak, are among the business leaders who have received the vaccination.

Covaxin and Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield are the two vaccines that are being administered in the country. Covaxin has been indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with inoculation of healthcare workers (HCWs), while for frontline workers (FLWs) it started on February 2.

More than 1.66 crore vaccine doses have been administered through 3,23,064 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 am on March 4.

These include 67,90,808 health care workers (HCWs 1st dose), 28,72,725 HCWs (2nd dose), 58,03,856 front line workers (FLWs 1st dose) and 4,202 FLWs (2nd Dose), 1,43,759 beneficiaries aged more than 45 years with specific co-morbidities (1st dose) and 10,00,698 beneficiaries aged more than 60 years.