HYDERABAD: The stage is set for increasing vaccination centres from Monday. However, there will be separate inoculation sites for Covishield and Covaxin by next week. On the first day, the state had administrated only Covishield vaccine and might begin administration of Covaxin in the next few days.
The state had received both vaccines last week. Now, with the consent form made available for Covaxin, its roll-out would begin soon, officials said.
“As per rules, persons getting vaccinated should be given two doses of the same vaccine. It will be easy for us to maintain data if we have separate sites,” director of public health and family welfare, Dr G Srinivasa Rao, said. However, identification of separate vaccination sites would happen later, officials said. In the meantime, an elaborate plan has been prepared for next week. The state will receive another 3.5 lakh doses of vaccines in the coming days.
Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (TIMS) is the only big centre left to launch the vaccination drive.
“The vaccine roll-out will begin from Monday,” officials said. Interestingly, TIMS is one of the hospitals where more than one vaccination centre could be administered, the officials said.
The government also directed the health department to identify more district hospitals, area hospitals and community health centres as vaccination centres instead of primary healthcare centres (PHC). “It is important that the temperature is maintained between 2 to 8 degree Celsius where ice-lined refrigerator (ILR) are available and PHC should be connected with cold chain point for the vaccine storage. Presently, all such centres are being identified as vaccination centres,” the officials said.
At big centres, more than one vaccine session (a session means covering 50 people a day) would happen. For this to happen, there should be availability of three rooms at the vaccination centres.
At present, Gandhi Hospital, Osmania Hospital and other big hospitals have such facilities.
“This is a cautious approach, to go in limited numbers first just like in vaccine trial. Our norms are far better than many advanced counties,” Dr Kiran Madala, a certified researcher with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said. Sources said vaccination for government healthcare employees would be completed in the next 15 days.
In the city, 28 more vaccine centres would be added from Monday in addition to the existing 14, while neighbouring Rangareddy district would have five additional centres apart from the existing nine.