Telangana infrastructure well placed for COVID-19 vaccination rollout: UNICEF experts

HYDERABAD: Telangana seems to be in a comfortable spot when it comes to the infrastructure required for the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine rollout, said experts from UNICEF and government agencies.

A key factor is that the State has already begun work to augment the infrastructure. The State has spent Rs 12-15 crore on infrastructural upgrade for the vaccine rollout. "We have been using only 50 per cent of the existing vaccine storage infrastructure. However, owing to the mammoth process that will ensue, we will be making more storage available in the leftover 50 per cent spare capacity," said a senior Health official. 

This was being done to ensure that routine vaccine programmes are not hampered. For this, work  has already begun at the Koti Health Department campus by adding four more walk-in coolers and two more freezers to the State Vaccine Centre. State officials are planning the infrastructural additions on three levels - State, district and hospital.

"After the State-level augmentation, the focus will be on district-level infrastructure. We already have 10 warehouses in erstwhile districts that have walk-in coolers. The capacity of these will be increased and a plan will be chalked out on how to segregate the space for all 33 districts from these. These warehouses will be converted into regional vaccine centres," said the official.

From these 10 warehouses, the vaccines will further be sent to hospitals that already have around 250 cold storage units. Here, they will get another 350 smaller-sized walk-in freezers. "The entire augmentation will roughly be two to three times the existing capacity. The State is already benefitted by infrastructure of combined Andhra Pradesh, which is now singularly being used for Telangana. The State also has the central storage being located in Hyderabad, which is well connected to all districts," said Dr Srikrishna RSV, Consultant Pediatrician, Continental Hospital.

COVID-19 death toll crosses 1,500 mark

HYDERABAD: Telangana detected 536 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday after conducting 52,657 tests, taking the State’s tally to 2.79 lakh. The State also saw 622 recoveries, bringing the active caseload down to 7,183 cases and taking the total recoveries to 2.70 lakh.

The State's toll crossed the 1,500 mark after three deaths were reported on Tuesday. The majority of cases were reported from GHMC limits (107), followed by Medchal (43) and Rangareddy (41)