6.3 lakh health workers to get first Covid vaccine jab in mid-January

BENGALURU: A total of 6,30,524 health care workers have been identified for the first phase of vaccination in Karnataka and the State Government is fully prepared for the vaccine rollout from mid-January, Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar indicated.Amongst the 6,30,524 health care workers, 2,73,211 are government employees while 3,57,313 are from the private sector. “The process of delivery of the coronavirus vaccine in India is about to begin soon and the state government is ready to streamline the vaccine delivery,” Dr Sudhakar tweeted.

The state has 9,807 experienced vaccinators and 28,427 identified vaccine centres. “More centres will be identified. All the data of the vaccinators and vaccine kits is uploaded on the CoWIN software prepared by the central government,” said Dr Sudhakar.

He also tweeted, “The central government is supplying much of the infrastructure required by the state and so far, 64 large ice-lined refrigerators (IRL) and 24 lakh syringes have been delivered to the state. Additional equipment, including remaining 31 lakh syringed will soon arrive.”

In the BBMP limits, there are 1,68,000 beneficiaries with 1,600 vaccinators and 1,512 vaccination sites, including 200 cold chains. According to the health department data, out of a total of 28,932 cold chain points in the country under Universal  Immunization programme, Karnataka has 2,870 cold chain points (nearly 10 pc). Every district in Karnataka and the BBMP have sufficient ice-lined refrigerators and deep freezers to store vaccines at the district level. 

State has cold chain infra for vaccine

The state has two state vaccine stores (SVS) at Bengaluru and Belagavi and five Regional Vaccine Stores (RVS) at Chitradurga, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Kalaburagi and Bagalkot with walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers equipped to store large quantities of vaccine at regional levels and distribute further to districts.The 2,855 cold chain points located at district and taluk hospitals, medical colleges, CHCs, PHCs and UPHCs are equipped with 3776 ice-lined refrigerators and 3,495 deep freezers in total.

This is sufficient to store all the childhood vaccines under UIP, OPV vaccine being received for Pulse Polio campaign in January 2021 and to store Covid-19 vaccines as well, when received from the Union Government. Also, all the districts have insulated vaccine vans dedicated to supply it to all the health facilities in the districts up to PHC levels.

This apart, Electronic Vaccine Intelligence network (eVIN) is in place at all the cold chain points in the state where vaccine stocks can be monitored in real time and also temperature loggers are installed to ensure vaccines are safely stored at the right temperature at all times.