Health department starts forming groups of health workers for Covid-19 vaccination

After the Covid-19 vaccination dry run on Thursday, the Gurugram health department has begun creating groups of 100 private health care workers to be administered the vaccine as and when it is made available

After the Covid-19 vaccination dry run on Thursday, the Gurugram health department has begun creating groups of 100 private health care workers to be administered the vaccine as and when it is made available.

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Over 36,000 health workers, including about 4500 from the government sector, will be covered under the first phase of the vaccination drive. The health department will set up at least 60 vaccination sites which could be raised to 80 depending on the requirement, said the senior officials.

Among the sites will be at least 21 large private hospitals.

“Staff at small health clinics or nursing homes falling within the vicinity of 21 big private hospitals will be clubbed together to form groups of 100 people each. It will help in covering maximum people for the vaccine shot,” said Dr MP Singh, district immunisation officer.

Health care workers have already been registered on Co-WIN, a digital platform to keep real-time information on the beneficiaries of the Covid-19 vaccine. The task is now to map vaccination sites to beneficiary based on proximity.

As per the plan, vaccination will be held every Monday, Thursday and Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm. The dry run was helpful in ironing out any wrinkles in the plans.

Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, said, “Out of the 181 sites that we had identified for the vaccination drive, we are likely to choose between 50 and 80. The exact number of sites will be known once we get to know the the vaccine doses that will be made available to us.”

Yadav said they hoped to vaccinated the 36,000 health care workers over a few weeks, so that they can be ready to administer the second booster shot after 28 days. “It requires planning and mapping,” said Yadav.

Under the phasewise strategy, first health care workers will be vaccinated, followed by frontline workers and then people above 50 years of age. Under priortised group, people below 50 years of age with co-morbidities are also included.