The Union government has hinted that India is all set to kickstart the Covid-19 vaccination drive across the country from the next week.
Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday said that the vaccination drive was supposed to begin within 10 days after Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) EUA to the two vaccines- Covishield and Covaxin. The DCGI gave approval to these vaccines on January 3.
This is for the first time when the government is officially speaking about the schedule of the Covid-19 vaccination drive.
Covisheild is developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and is manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute of India and the 2nd vaccine is Covaxin which is developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The data related to the recipients of the vaccine has been uploaded on the newly developed IT platform Co-WIN by the government. The immunization or vaccination drive will simultaneously begin across India where three crore healthcare and frontline workers will be on priority.
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Rajesh Bhushan said, “Since this is a bulk database of healthcare and frontline workers, it has already been pre-populated on Co-WIN and there is no need for these beneficiaries to self-register themselves for the vaccination. However, priority groups will have to register as that set of data would require editing.”
According to Bhushan, the vaccine would be air transported in refrigerated vans by the manufacturers to four primary vaccine stores or depots that are located in different regions, Karnal, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, and then will reach 37 state vaccine stores.
Further, vaccines will be supplied to district stores and then to primary health centres and sub-centers by states and union territories. Over 29,000 cold chain points will be involved in the whole process and it will be monitored by the vaccine intelligence network which would be enabled by Co-WIN.
