The Union health ministry has informed all states and union territories that the first supply of Covid-19 vaccine will be dispatched shortly. On Friday, the second phase of nationwide vaccine dry run will be taken up by all states and UTs except Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh as they have already conducted dry run in all districts.
States like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal will receive their supply of vaccines by suppliers. While other 18 states and UTs Andaman and the Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Daman and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand, will receive their vaccines from their respective government medical store depots.
Though preparation is on for rolling out the vaccination drive, Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra, Kerala, Chhattisgarh are worrying, the health minister said. The ministry on Thursday wrote to these three states and West Bengal to check the sudden spike in the number of Covid-19 cases in these states.
Interacting with the state health ministers regarding the dry run, Harsh Vardhan asked them to submit their inputs after the dry run gets completed. Kerala health minister KK Shailaja raised the issue whether doctors who are practising only in private will be registered for first phase vaccination etc. There is a confusion over the cost of the immunisation drive as well. While priority groups will get the vaccine free, the Centre has not yet spelt out whether the state governments will have to pay for the doses.
{{/usCountry}}Interacting with the state health ministers regarding the dry run, Harsh Vardhan asked them to submit their inputs after the dry run gets completed. Kerala health minister KK Shailaja raised the issue whether doctors who are practising only in private will be registered for first phase vaccination etc. There is a confusion over the cost of the immunisation drive as well. While priority groups will get the vaccine free, the Centre has not yet spelt out whether the state governments will have to pay for the doses.
{{/usCountry}}Like the last round of dry run held on January 2, tomorrow too the districts will identify three types of sessions for the mock drive: district hospital, medical college/private health facility, urban/rural outreach. The steps of a dry run include beneficiary registration, micro-planning, vaccination and the Union minister emphasised that the site organisers will have to hold review meetings after the session to gather feedback. There will be four types of officers deployed at a site. Vaccinator officers include doctors, staff nurses, pharmacists who are legally authorised to give injections. Then there will be vaccine officer 1 including police, home guard, civil defence, NCC, NSS to check the registration status of a beneficiary. Then there will be vaccine officer 2 who will verify documents. Vaccine officers 3 and 4 will manage the crowd.