UP rolls out Covid vaccination guidelines, three categories identified

Ghaziabad: The Uttar Pradesh government has issued guidelines for Covid-19 vaccination and identified three categories of people who would be vaccinated in first,

Ghaziabad: The Uttar Pradesh government has issued guidelines for Covid-19 vaccination and identified three categories of people who would be vaccinated in first, second and third phases. Officials of the Ghaziabad district administration said that they have completed almost all preparations for the first phase and ready for activity in case the vaccine becomes available in January.

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In his directions, UP’s additional chief secretary has stated that the health care workers (HCWs) which includes staff of government and private health care facilities, will get the vaccine in the first phase. The second phase is scheduled for frontline workers such as police personnel, home guards, jail staff and employees of Nagar Palikas, among others.

The third category includes people aged over 50 years and also those aged below but having issues like diabetes, cancer, and high blood pressure, will get the shots.

“We have made preparation and training of our 80 teams identified for the purpose is also complete. Likewise, we have a vaccine depot and 29 cold chain points in the district. Overall, we have identified about 25,000 people in first category while recipients of the two other categories will be identified later. In case the vaccine is made available in January, we are ready with the facilities,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate.

“The sessions of vaccination have been scheduled on Monday and Friday and more vaccination can be given on same days in following week if there is some pendency. Monday and Friday have been selected for Covid vaccination as we have our routine immunisation on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It is also directed that every team deployed for vaccination will have six members,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer, Ghaziabad.

“We expect that the district could have about 15,000 people under the second category and the third category is estimated to have about 20% of the population. However, their listing will be taken up at a later date. Initially, we are focussing on first category,” he added.

The direction said that all the cold chain points must have provision of CCTV cameras and at least 15 days of recording should be preserved. The directions have, however, said that there should be no video-recording or CCTV-recording inside the vaccination rooms.

On Sunday, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan had said that people of the country could get a Covid-19 shot in January. His remarks came days after the health ministry released a document, answering public queries on vaccination.