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3 lakh healthcare workers to get vaccine shots on Day 1 of pan-India Covid inoculation drive


Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Jan 14, 2021:    Around 3 lakh healthcare workers will be administered vaccine shots at 2,934 sites across India on the first day of the nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive which is set to begin from January 16, official sources said.

 

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"Around 3 lakh frontline healthcare workers will be inoculated at 2,934 sites across the country on the first day of January 16," a source said.

The Union Health Ministry has advised states not to organise "unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day" and said that each vaccination session will cater to a maximum of 100 beneficiaries. Covid-19 vaccine Live Updates HERE

“States have been advised to organise vaccination sessions taking into account 10 per cent reserve/wastage doses and an average of 100 vaccinations per session each day.”

"Therefore, any undue haste on the part of states to organise unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day is not advised," the ministry said on Wednesday.

The ministry also said that states and UTs have also been advised to increase the number of vaccination session sites that would be operational every day in a progressive manner as the vaccination process stabilises and moves forward.
Covid-19 inoculation drive

The government on Tuesday hinted that vaccine recipients, for now, will not have the option to choose from the two vaccines -- Oxford Covid-19 vaccine, Covishield, manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII) and indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech -- that have been approved for restricted emergency use in India.

According to the health ministry, getting vaccinated for Covid-19 will be voluntary.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan had said on Tuesday, "At many places in the world more than one vaccine is being administered. But, presently, in no country vaccine recipients have the option of choosing the shots."

According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities.

The cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government, officials had said.

All 1.65 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines -- 1.1 crore of Covishield and 55 lakh of Covaxin -- procured by the Centre have been allocated to all states and UTs in proportion to their healthcare workers database, it said.

According to official sources, most of the 1.1 crore Covishield doses from Pune-based SII have been shipped to 60 consignee points across India from where they will be sent to smaller centres.

Of the 55 lakh doses of indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech ordered by the Centre, the first tranche of 2.4 lakh doses has been dispatched to 12 states.

Covaxin has been sent to 12 sites --- one each in Ganavaram, Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bengaluru, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai, Lucknow and Hyderabad, an official source said.

Covaxin has been developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Health ministry officials said that there will be a gap of 28 days between two doses of Covid-19 vaccines and its effectiveness can be seen only after 14 days, and urged people to keep following Covid appropriate behaviour.

States have been asked to making arrangements to deal with any Covid-19 vaccine-related side effects as one of the measures towards safe vaccine delivery.


Courtesy:India Today