Maharashtra plans who will get Covid-19 vaccine and how

Healthcare workers, daily wage labourers will be first priority, followed by frontline workers such as police and civic staff.

Set for a large-scale immunisation drive, the task force, which was appointed to chalk out the Covid-19 vaccination programme in Maharashtra, has decided the priority of groups to be vaccinated, cold chain resources, training methods and identified over 16,000 vaccinators, among other modalities.

A health worker collects swab sample of a resident at Govandi in Mumbai on Wednesday. (Pratik Chorge/HT Photo)

The task force, headed by chief secretary Sanjay Kumar, in its first meeting, has decided that healthcare workers and daily wage labourers will be the first priority, followed by frontline workers such as police and security personnel, Asha workers and municipal staff. The third category will be of people over the age of 50 and those under the age of 50 with co-morbidities.

Dr N Ramaswami, state health commissioner and member secretary of the task force, said, “The priority has been set as per the guidelines of the Government of India. The first priority will be healthcare workers, both public and private, followed by police and security personnel. We are collecting the details on people above 50 years of age and people under the age of 50 with co-morbidities, but it will be in the next phase.”

According to the health department’s estimation, the number of healthcare workers in the state is around 4.5-5 lakh.

“So far, we have added the data of over 90,000 people to the Central government’s [Co-Win] portal. As per the estimates, around 2.60 lakh government healthcare workers in the state will be vaccinated,” a bureaucrat said. He added that the government has identified 16,245 vaccinators and their details have been enrolled with the Centre on a designated portal.

Health minister Rajesh Tope said, “The vaccination programme is a huge task. We are currently preparing the data on healthcare workers. Around 99% of the data of public hospitals is updated, while in case of private healthcare workers, 78% work is done. The district-level training has started, and they will train the taluka-level staff.”

The task force has planned 3,145 cold chains, including 27 storage facilities on block level, 34 on district level, nine on division level and one main central storage facility for the vaccine vials in the state. “The Centre has so far only said that it will provide for the shortage of coolers, ice-lined refrigerators, etc. by December-January. We have already submitted the details of [storage] equipment needed,” Tope told reporters.

Ramaswami added, “We have adequate storage facilities for the priority categories. We need additional facilities in eight divisions of the health department. Six walk-in coolers and two walk-in freezers will be provided by the Government of India and added in these eight divisions. We are doing the civil and electrical work to make the additional equipment fully functional. The work is estimated to cost ₹45 lakh.”

The task force has already set up committees from district to block level to ensure effective distribution of the vaccine. The vaccination booths, according to the state government, will have five people, including two vaccinators, one assistant on data and records, one assistant on logistics and one for crowd management.

The state health department has also assured that other vaccination drives will not be affected.