20k Covaxin doses land in city; final prep underway for V-Day | Latest News Delhi - Hindustan Times
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20k Covaxin doses land in city; final prep underway for V-Day

By, Anvit Srivastava
Jan 14, 2021 04:27 AM IST

This comes a day after 264,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine, manufactured by Serum Institute of India, reached the Capital. The first doses will be administered on Saturday.

The first lot of Bharat Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine ‘Covaxin’, was shipped to Delhi’s primary storage facility at the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality hospital on Wednesday, days before the inoculation drive is scheduled to begin countrywide, and were then taken to vaccination centres across the city by police and administration staff.

Officials aware of the development said the boxes were shifted to a temperature-controlled facility in cargo terminals and were then shipped out. (Representative Image)
Officials aware of the development said the boxes were shifted to a temperature-controlled facility in cargo terminals and were then shipped out. (Representative Image)

This comes a day after 264,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine, manufactured by Serum Institute of India, reached the Capital. The first doses will be administered on Saturday.

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Two flights, Air India flight AI 559 and Vistara’s UK 860, brought the Covaxin consignment into the Capital from Hyderabad on Wednesday. While the AI flight landed at the Indira Gandhi International airport with three boxes of the vaccine around 9.15am, the other, loaded with four boxes of Covaxin, arrived around 10.40am.

Officials aware of the development said the boxes were shifted to a temperature-controlled facility in cargo terminals and were then shipped out. “While the vaccines brought in by Air India were dispatched for Kurukshetra, the Vistara consignment was sent to Delhi,” said an official who asked not to be named.

Hospital authorities at the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality (RGSS) hospital said the four boxes brought there held 20,000 doses of the vaccine. Later in the day, these were shipped to different hospitals across 11 districts. The government will start the vaccination drive at hospitals on Saturday, by administering the shots to healthcare workers identified in the priority category. Later, the vaccination sites will be expanded to over 600 places across the city.

According to a list that the government’s health department shared with the police, most vaccination points for Saturday are in south-east Delhi, which has 10 earmarked hospitals, followed by east and central Delhi that have nine hospitals each. The hospitals have been marked as private, district and government hospitals.

The data has been shared with police districts across the city to ensure law-and-order on Saturday.

Special commissioner of police (operations) Muktesh Chander confirmed that the vaccine was transported to hospitals on Wednesday. “The police provided security during the transport of the vaccine to the hospitals. Local police have been alerted and keeping secure every point where the vaccine is stored,” he said.

Meanwhile, Vistara and Spice Jet continued to transport the vaccines to other parts of the country. A Vistara spokesperson said the airline carried multiple shipments of the vaccines to various routes including Mumbai to Varanasi and Hyderabad to Delhi.

A SpiceJet flight also landed at Delhi airport from Pune, carrying 34 boxes of Covishield vaccines. “Of these, nine were sent to Agra, 12 to Bareilly and 13 boxes to Meerut,” the officer said.

The airline in a statement said, “From Pune, SpiceJet carried 34 boxes of Covishield to Delhi. On Wednesday a total of 111 boxes of Covid-19 vaccine, weighing 3.5 tonnes were shipped by SpiceJet from Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to 11 cities.”

Delhi police vehicles escorted the vehicles carrying the vaccines to nearby states. Police said they alerted the control room of the UP police after which the vaccine was handed to the state police.

Meanwhile, senior police officers said 70% of the city law enforcement’s agency data was uploaded on CoWIN portal, with the remainder due to be done by the end of Wednesday.

“The Delhi Police has over 80,000 personnel. Seventy per cent of their data has been uploaded on the CoWIN portal, and the rest will be uploaded today [Wednesday]. People over 50 years of age will be given priority. They had received the date, time, and centre for their Covid-19 vaccination via SMS,” Chander told ANI.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Prawesh Lama covers crime, policing, and issues of security in Delhi. Raised in Darjeeling, educated in Mumbai, he also looks at special features on social welfare in the National Capital.

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