Jaipur
The much-awaited vaccine for corona has finally arrived at the designated national and state-level stores and vaccination will start from January 16.
A total of 16.5 million doses including 11 million doses of Covishield vaccine from Serum Institute of India (SII) and 5.5 million doses Covaxin from Bharat Biotech have been received. The vaccination drive will begin from January 16 to inoculate 30 million healthcare and frontline workers across the country.
Rajasthan has received 6.30 lakh doses including 5.43 lakh of Covishield and 60,000 doses of Covaxin and in the first phase approximately 4.50 lakh healthcare workers will be vaccinated across the state. The vaccine is stored at the temperature of 2 to 8 degrees.
Rajasthan Health Minister Dr Raghu Sharma said, “Around 4.5 lakh healthcare workers have been included in the first phase of corona vaccination that is starting from January 16 and they will be administered Covishield corona vaccine.”
He said that the first phase of vaccination will take place at 282 session sites. He said that vaccines are stored in three districts having air connectivity namely Jaipur, Udaipur and Jodhpur.
The Health Minister said that there are three COVID vaccine stores at the state-level, seven at the divisional level and 34 vaccine stores at the district level. He said that 2,444 cold chain points are functional at the Community and Primary Health Centres.
Informing further Dr Sharma said that 5,626 vaccination teams have been trained, along with 3689 government medical institutions and 2969 health institutions in the private sector have been identified for the first phase of vaccination. COVIN software has been uploaded in 3736 health institutions which will be used as the session place.
The facility of 104 and 108 ambulances will be available at the vaccination centres to prevent any adverse effects during the vaccination. The Health Minister said, “Arrangements for the treatment of potential adverse effects post vaccination have been ensured at all the places of vaccination session.” He said that public representatives (MLA, Pradhan, Sarpanch), doctors, health workers, swasthya mitras and anganbari workers, sahayika and ASHA sahayoginis were oriented at the district, block and sector level prior to the preparations of vaccination.
Earlier Dry Run (Mock Drill) was practiced at 102 centres across all the districts on 2550 health personnel. Dr Sharma said that first of all, a model of vaccination room and monitoring room was made for the beneficiary and rehearsal of administering the vaccine was done. Meanwhile, the vaccination officer verified the identity documents and then the beneficiary was allowed to enter the room. The beneficiary was sent to the vaccination room after certifying on COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (COVIN) software, where the vaccinator officer completed the vaccination process (demo) and made entry on COVIN software about administering vaccine to the beneficiary. He said that the beneficiary was kept at the monitoring room for 30 minutes under the observation of the vaccination officer. During the process of dry run, time taken to vaccinate a beneficiary and in making entry on COVIN software was assessed and the process of running the software was checked.
It is to be mentioned that Covishield is developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and is manufactured by SII. Covisheild has been offered to the Government of India at a special price of Rs 200 by the manufacturer. Covaxin is procured from Bharat Biotech. 55 lakh doses of Covaxin is purchased at a price of Rs 295 each, while the manufacturer is providing 16.5 lakh doses free of cost, so the cost of this vaccine will come down to Rs 206 per dose.
