3.8 lakh healthcare staff to get COVID-19 vaccine in Andhra Pradesh

VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh has geared up to administer Covishield to healthcare workers under the first phase of nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive beginning Saturday. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy will launch the vaccination drive at the Government General Hospital in the city.

While 4.77 lakh doses of Covishield, developed by AstraZeneca and University of Oxford and manufactured by Serum Institute of India, has been distributed to 13 districts of the State, 20,000 doses of Covaxin developed by Bharat Biotech, in collaboration with National Institute of Virology, has been stored at the State Cold Storage Centre at Gannavaram Community Health Centre as buffer stock.

Though the Centre has approved both Covishield and Covaxin, the beneficiaries in AP will not have the option to choose between the two vaccines. “We have to administer the vaccine dose of 0.5 ml twice with a gap of 28 days. If a beneficiary is given Covishield as the first dose, the second shot must be the same. To avoid confusion, only Covishield has been distributed across the State and Covaxin is kept as buffer stock.

All the 3,87,983 healthcare workers in the State will be given Covishield,” State Immunisation Officer Dr Srihari told TNIE. On the commencement of second phase, he said we will start vaccinating the registered beneficiaries once the Centre gives its nod. 

State likely to receive more doses of vaccine

The State is likely to receive more doses of vaccine in the coming days. The vaccine will be administered to other frontline workers at the earliest unless there are any major adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) reported after the first shot,” he said. A total of 332 session sites have been identified for vaccination. The number of sites will be increased as per the need. Each site will have a team of six medical staff, who vaccinate at least 100 beneficiaries a day. A total of 2,324 staff have been roped in to vaccinate a maximum of 33,200 healthcare workers a day in the State. A message has been sent to all the beneficiaries of the first phase furnishing the address of the session site and their time slot to get the shot, he added.  

Several healthcare workers are happy to get the vaccine in the first phase. Some others are still sceptical and worried to take the vaccine though they have registered their names. “All medicines have side effects and the vaccine is no exception. There is no point in being paranoid with the fact that something may go wrong. In fact we are happy that our country is able to roll out the vaccine much earlier than expected and we have been given priority,” said Dr Surya Prabha.