over the Covid-19 vaccination drive ended on Saturday. India's
vaccination drive will begin on Jan 16, government said. The decision, the government said on Saturday, was taken at a high-level meeting where Modi reviewed the status of Covid-19 and vaccine preparedness across states and union territories. According to the Health Ministry guidelines on Covid-19 vaccination, the latest electoral roll for Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections will be used to identify the population aged 50 years or more.
Here's all you need to know about the vaccination drive:
1 Who will get it first?
Priority will be given to nearly three crore healthcare and frontline workers for vaccination. After inoculating them, the government will then vaccinate those above 50 years of age and the under-50 population groups with co-morbidities, which comes to around 27 crore.
2 How has India prepared for the vaccine?
India has conducted three phases of dry runs having been conducted across the country to assess its vaccine delivery mechanism and logistical challenges. The first dry run was carried out in eight districts in four states on December 28-29. The second dry run included 74 districts and was conducted on Jan 3. The third dry run was conducted yesterday across 615 districts covering 4895 session sites in 33 States/UTs.
A training process for vaccinators and vaccine administrators, who comprise a crucial pillar of the vaccination exercise, was detailed out.
2,360 participants were trained during a national level training of trainers which comprised state immunization officers, cold chain officers, IEC officials, development partners etc.
More than 61,000 programme managers, 2 lakh vaccinators and 3.7 lakh other vaccination team members have been trained so far as part of trainings at states, districts and block levels.
3 What vaccines are available in India?
At present, India has approved two vaccines - Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin on January 3 for restricted emergency use approval. Many other vaccines are in the pipeline. Prominent names among them are ZYdus Cadila's ZyCov-D, which has been approved for phase 3 trials, Russia Sputnik vaccine, which has a tie-up with Dr. Reddy's and Pfizer-Biotech vaccine.
4 Where do I register for vaccine?
The government has announced that it will launch an application Co-WIN for vaccine registration. However, the application is still not available for public use and is in pre-product stage.
It has the data of health officials who will be first in line to get the vaccination. Over 75 lakh health officials have registered for it already.
So please don't download any app or surf any website which claims to provide you the vaccine or asks for your personal details for registration.
The Co-WIN application, when launched will provide real time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries of the Covid-19 vaccine.
It will assist the program managers across all levels through automated session allocation for pre-registered beneficiaries, their verification and for generating a digital certificate upon successful completion of the vaccine schedule.