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PMC’s Covid vaccine storage plan: 55 ice-laced refrigerators, 35 deep freezers
PUNE The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) does not have a cold storage unit of its own and is dependent on state and divisional cold storage units.
PUNE The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) does not have a cold storage unit of its own and is dependent on state and divisional cold storage units.
Although the city has a state storage in its jurisdiction, the civic body will rely on the state health department’s walk-in storage facility and its own deep freezers to store the Covid-19 vaccine.
Dr Ashish Bharti, civic health chief said, “The PMC does not have its own walk-in cold storage facility, but we have 55 ice-laced refrigerators and 35 deep freezers. They can maintain a temperature of about 2-8 degrees Celsius and can store about 3-5 lakh doses at a time. Given that we currently have only 44,000 healthcare workers who have registered with us, we won’t need a lot of storage capacity. Most private hospitals have not registered their staff with us and so they won’t be eligible for the same.”
Currently, the state storage unit is located at the state’s family planning and welfare department located near Naidu hospital, which will also work as storage for Pune city’s vaccine needs.
A senior civic staffer assigned with the vaccination drive, but speaking on condition of anonymity said, “We are yet to get guidelines for the vaccination drive, but during a morning video conference call on Tuesday we were told that we have to set up vaccination booths like election booths; which will have three rooms; waiting room, vaccination room and observation room. We will send an e-certificate once a person completes the two-dose course which happens in a 28-day timeframe. We will get a detailed guidelines on the same soon and the staff will also undergo training on the same.”
While the civic body is preparing for storage and registration of the vaccine beneficiaries, there are still no guidelines on whether antibody tests would be necessary before a person is vaccinated.
