India will launch its vaccination campaign on 16 January following upcoming festivals such as Lohri, Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Magh Bihu, giving priority to some 30 million health care staff and frontline workers, according to a statement by the Ministry of Health.
The action was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to evaluate the situation of Covid-19 in the country together with the planning of the States and Union Territories for the vaccination of Covid on Saturday.
Indian drug regulator has issued emergency use authorisation or accelerated clearance for two vaccines, the Covishield Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, which have proven protection and immunogenicity.
2.360 participants were trained at the national level Training of trainers including state immunisation officers, cold chain officers, development partners, and others.
More than 61,000 programme administrators, 200,000 vaccine suppliers and 370,000 other immunisation team members have been qualified as part of federal, district and block level preparation. “The vaccination exercise is underpinned by the principles of human participation-Jan Bhagidari; the use of election experience-the booth strategy and the Universal Immunization Program,” the press release stated.
The Serum Institute has 50 million doses of vaccine packed at its Pune plant and another 50 million doses are available for packaging. It will now take between 60-70 million doses every month.
Recently, talks with Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, the States gathered to point out a variety of issues they had encountered during the dry run.
Chhattisgarh too countered network problems in tribal belts, while Telangana also faced tech issues. Jammu and Kashmir have highlighted the problem that most areas of the states have 2G networks, which also made it impossible to use the Co-Win network that powers the 2G service.