BMC to plan distribution of Covid-19 vaccine across Mumbai

With the case tally crossing two lakh last week, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will in the next two months draw up a strategy for distribution of

With the case tally crossing two lakh last week, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will in the next two months draw up a strategy for distribution of vaccine for Covid-19, which is expected to be available in the coming months.

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According to BMC, initially, 30% of the city’s total population of over 1.24 crore, including frontline workers and senior citizens, will need vaccine. The civic body plans to take help of private hospitals, along with government and civic-run hospitals for vaccine distribution.

The strategy will be drawn after BMC’s door-to-door survey under ‘My Family-My Responsibility’ initiative concludes in the last week of October. Starting September 15, BMC, with the help of 5,000 teams consisting 15,000 frontline staff, has started to screen citizens for Covid-19 symptoms. Along with it, the civic body is also educating citizens about safety and precautions to be undertaken for living with Covid-19 in the coming months.

The civic body said it will have to use the network of civic hospitals, clinics, health centres, maternity homes along with several private hospitals in the city to give vaccines to the vulnerable group.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner of BMC, said, “The arrival of the vaccine may take some time, but we will start our planning from November, once the ‘My family-My Responsibility’ programme is completed. The programme will give us data on individuals or groups who need to get the vaccine first. The planning for the vulnerable target group can be done in a week. Whenever the vaccine arrives, we can give it to this vulnerable target audience within 15 days using our civic-run health infrastructure and with the help of private health care institutions.”

BMC officials said they also have some data on senior citizens, who were screened as part of initiative to bring down the mortality rate. The civic body has screened over 10 lakh senior citizens and recommended several of them opt for oxygen therapy, as their oxygen levels were low. Several Covid-19 cases among senior citizens were also identified owing to this drive, BMC officials said.

BMC also said the vaccine distribution strategy will be amended from time-to-time based on the guidelines from the Central and state government. The Central government has already formed an expert committee comprising representatives from all relevant ministries and institutions to oversee all aspects of its Covid-19 vaccine plan, from identification of the vaccine to buying to financing the purchase to distribution and administration.

A week ago, BMC kicked off trials of Covid-19 vaccine developed by the Oxford University. The trial is being undertaken at the civic-run KEM Hospital.

Kakani said, “We are going to conduct trials on around 100 individuals to start with, and they will be monitored for around six months to check the reaction to the vaccine. We are also conducting trials using anti-tuberculosis vaccination (TB) — Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) – vaccine. In the BCG vaccine, we will monitor the patients for at least three months.”