NEW DELHI: India begins today a nationwide vaccination drive against the novel coronavirus to be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 10:30 am via video conferencing.
Billed as the world’s largest vaccination program, covering the entire length and breadth of the country, the drive aims to first inoculate millions of its healthcare and frontline workers and reach an estimated 3 crore people by the end of its first phase.
A total of 3006 session sites across all states and union territories will be virtually connected during the launch. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the inaugural day, the union health ministry has said.
In the first phase government and private sector health care workers including Integrated Child Development Services(ICDS) workers, will receive the vaccine in the first phase.
The Centre has planned to vaccinate around 3 lakh healthcare workers at 2,934 session sites on the first day of the inoculation drive.
The drive will be held daily from 9am to 5pm, except on the days earmarked for routine immunisation programmes.
Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday termed the country’s vaccination drive as the “beginning of the end of Covid-19.” He also urged people to trust the indigenously manufactured vaccine, saying the government has given emergency use approval after proper scientific scrutiny.
The central government has introduced an application named CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Work) to monitor the entire vaccination process.
In the next phases of the vaccination drive, people aged over 50 will be vaccinated and those who are below 50 years but have serious health conditions or co-morbidities, according to the health ministry.
There has been dry-runs at vaccination centres across the country with lakhs of healthcare staff across districts trained.
The drugs regulatory body of India has currently approved two vaccines. Pune-based Serum Institute of India has developed the Covishield vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. while the Covaxin has been developed by Hyderabad’s Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Medical Council of research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology.
The vaccination programme in the country will use Co-WIN, an online digital platform developed by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which will facilitate real time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccine. This digital platform will assist programme managers across all levels while conducting vaccination sessions.
A dedicated 24×7 call centre – 1075 – has also been established for addressing the queries related to Covid-19 pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software.
The full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines against Covid-19 have been allocated to all States/UTs in the proportion of Health Care Workers database, Union Health Ministry stated.
