45,000 vaccine doses to arrive today, inoculation to take weeks instead of days

The state health department allocated 44,950 doses of the Covishield coronavirus vaccine to Gurugram on Wednesday, according to senior health department officials, who added that the vaccination will take place over weeks instead of three days

The state health department allocated 44,950 doses of the Covishield coronavirus vaccine to Gurugram on Wednesday, according to senior health department officials, who added that the vaccination will take place over weeks instead of three days.

HT Image

According to officials, the vaccine will arrive in the district on Thursday and the vaccination process of healthcare workers in the district will start on January 16. However, the department has now changed its vaccination strategy, with officials confirming that healthcare workers would be vaccinated over several days or weeks, instead of three days, as proposed earlier.

Earlier this week, district health officials had planned to inoculate over 36,000 healthcare workers, of government and private facilities, in three days by holding a vaccination drive at almost 161 session sites. “The plan has to be revised according to the fresh guidelines issued by the state and centre. It is confirmed that vaccination drive to cover healthcare workers in the first phase will continue for days or weeks,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer.

Even the union ministry of health and family welfare, in a series of tweets on Wednesday, clarified that the vaccination process has to stabilised, without haste. The ministry tweeted: “States have been advised to organize vaccination sessions taking into account 10% reserve/wastage doses and average of 100 vaccinations/session/day. Therefore, any undue haste on the parts of States to organise unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day is not advised.”

Further, it tweeted: “States and UTs have been advised to increase the number of vaccination session sites that would be operational every day in progressive manner as the vaccination process stabilizes and moves forward.”

Rajeev Arora, additional chief secretary, health department, was in the city on Wednesday to inspect the Wazirabad session site, which will be linked with the vaccine launch event of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for two-way communication on January 16.

He said, “Within a week after January 16, the pace of the vaccination will be clear. The future strategy depends upon the vaccine supply. After healthcare workers, frontline workers will be inoculated. Their data has to be finalised by January 25.”

Yadav, on the other hand, said that it will take a couple of days to devise the vaccination plan as it has to be discussed with private stakeholders too. In Gurugram, as per the vaccine allocation list, over 43,070 are healthcare workers employed by the state government as well as those practising in private hospitals, nursing homes and clinics. At least 1,820 are those commissioned by the Central government, while 60 health workers are under the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS).

They have to be placed in groups of 100 for every finalised vaccination site and the health department has to identify vaccination sites for maximum coverage. However, for the January 16 vaccine launch, the district has already fixed the six session sites.

According to Yadav, Gurugram will also do the procurement of vaccine for four other districts — Palwal (5,090 doses), Nuh (7,120 doses), Faridabad (22,620 doses) and Rewari (5,700 doses). These districts will collect the vaccine from the storage unit at Civil Hospital in Pataudi. Neighbouring NCR districts of Jhajjar, Sonepat, Panipat and Karnal have been allocated 7,990, 10,310, 6,660 and 13,160 doses of the vaccine, respectively, by the state health department.