CHENNAI: More than 45 insulated vehicles will move thousands of vaccine doses from district warehouses to over 2,700 cold chain points in the next couple of days and 21,000 workers will gear up to inoculate healthcare providers from January 16 from more than 15,000 vaccination sites readied by the state.
On Tuesday, Tamil Nadu received 5.36 lakh doses of Oxford vaccine Covishield, manufactured by Pune’s Serum Institute, which was approved by the drug authorities for emergency use. The vaccines were moved to the state vaccine store from where they were moved to 10 regional vaccine stores. While 1.18 lakh doses were reserved for Chennai, 73,200 doses were sent to Coimbatore, and 59,800 doses were sent to Salem.
“The allotment was done based on the number of beneficiaries in each region,” said director of public health Dr T S Selvavinayagam. From the regional vaccine store, vaccines will be sent to districts. For instance, vaccines from the Chennai region will go to Chennai Corporation, Poonamallee, Tiruvallur, Chengalpet and Kancheepuram. While those from Coimbatore region will go to Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur and Nilgiris.
At every point, the temperature for the vaccine will be between 2ºC and 8ºC, said Tamil Nadu Medical Service Corporation managing director P Umanath. “Technical challenges in cold storage are unlikely because all vaccines under the universal immunisation programme are stored at the same temperature. All transport vehicles are insulated and can maintain the same temperature,” he said.
The state has the capacity to store 2.5 crore vaccines in its cold storage units. Although the state had initially planned more than 46,000 vaccination centres, it has told the Centre that it will be able to achieve the target and speed with 15,000 centres. The aim is to keep it closer to a tertiary care centre so beneficiaries can be rushed in in case of adverse events. Vaccinations will begin from 307 vaccinations centres. “We may increase it to 1,000 centres and we have 2,000 more centres as back up for vaccinating healthcare providers,” said joint director immunisation Dr K Vinay Kumar. Each centre will vaccinate not more than 100 people a day.
Health minister C Vijaya Baskar said the vaccine is safe and has undergone rigorous testing. “No one witnessed any adverse effects during the human trial conducted in Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital in Chennai. The vaccine has been approved for use by the Centre only after favourable results,” he said. Officials said common side effects of the vaccine include fever and muscular pain.
Earlier, Tamil Nadu Government Doctors’ Association had said it will put out an advisory based on opinions from three independent specialists on the safety, efficacy and choice of vaccines as some of the doctors and frontline workers have “expressed concern on the safety of the vaccine supplied”. “Some doctors expressed unwillingness to vaccinate for the fear of serious complications,” association president Dr K Senthil said.
Allaying apprehension about vaccine hesitancy, he said the Centre has said the vaccine is safe. “It will enhance the immune system to prevent the new strain of coronavirus,” he said.