HYDERABAD: Even as the Centre is making plans to roll out the soon-to-be ready Covid
vaccine, Telangana has estimated that nearly a crore people in the four different categories, identified by the central government, will have to be given the shot.
In the initial phase, three lakh healthcare staff, both government and private, would be given the vaccine based on the registration of their details on CoWIN software. The registration process, going on swiftly, is facing some resistance from small and medium private hospitals.
“Everything will be ready from sub-centre level for vaccine roll out We had initially estimated that a crore population in the vulnerable categories will need vaccine in the initial stage, but these are just initial preparations. We are still waiting for vaccine approval,” health minister Etala Rajender said.
People aged above 60, people with comorbities like hypertension and people working in emergency areas like healthcare staff are the ones to be given priority. Officials said that while the registration of the government healthcare staff was almost complete, private hospitals, especially medium and small ones, needed persuasion from the government to provide data of their staff.
In big hospitals, the government might provide a centre for vaccine roll out. Other hospital staff need to go to the government centres to get the vaccination jabs. “Some hospitals are asking for a specific number of doses and said that they will provide the vaccine to their staff, while some generally have apprehensions, especially those with wrong registrations, and want to hide their staff details,” sources said A few days ago officials sent a circular to private hospitals to complete the registration fast. “We just completed enrolling the staff of both government and private hospitals in our district. The private hospitals had conducted meetings and pursued them enter their data,” Samarjya Lakhmi, Rangareddy district medical & health officer (DMHO), said.
Indian Medical Association (IMA) member Dr Raja Nasingh Rao said: “Initial resistance will be for some time, but everyone will have to take the vaccine.”