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Delhi prepared to start vaccinations, says health minister Jain
The city government had earlier estimated the number of people who would be administered vaccines in priority at 5.1 million – of which the number of people aged over 50 years and those with co-morbidities was pegged at 4.2 million.
Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain on Sunday said that the Capital is “fully prepared” to start vaccinating its masses, a day after the Drug Controller General of India granted approval to the Covid-19 vaccines of the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech.
“Delhi is fully prepared to start vaccinations. In the first phase, it will be administered to health care and front line workers. Delhi has around 300,000 health care and 600,000 front line workers. After that we will administer the shots to people aged above 50 years and those with co-morbidities,” said Jain.
The city government had earlier estimated the number of people who would be administered vaccines in priority at 5.1 million – of which the number of people aged over 50 years and those with co-morbidities was pegged at 4.2 million.
“The dry run was successful. It shows that Delhi is ready for vaccination. We have planned for 1,000 vaccine centres. While we will start with 500 of them, the numbers will be scaled up to 1,000 in phases. Now that the approval has been given, we hope that the vaccine will be available in a week’s time,” said Jain.
Each centre is supposed to administer 100 vaccine shots a day under the current plan.
After the dry-run on Saturday, Jain had said that not only health care and front line workers — as announced by the Central government — but all residents of the city, who are eligible, will get the Covid-19 vaccines for free.
Jain’s announcement was slightly different from the one made by Union health minister Harsh Vardhan, who said the Covid shots will be free for the most prioritised beneficiaries —one crore health care and two crore front line workers in the first phase.
Both Jain and Vardhan inspected Saturday’s dry-run at separate centres in Delhi. Three locations were chosen for the exercise – a private hospital, a government hospital and a government clinic.
Dr Suneela Garg, professor of community medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College, who also leads a committee helping the Delhi government with the preparations for Covid-19 vaccination, said: “Delhi is ready for vaccination drive. The dry run has taught us that we have to concentrate our efforts on three specific areas – managing crowd at the vaccine centres, verification of those registered for the vaccine and monitoring patients for 30 minutes after the vaccine.”