After days of uncertainty over the vaccine drives and the surging crowds at the vaccine centres, the Guntur’s district administration has decided to set up permanent vaccination centres at municipal/mandal headquarters in the district to administer vaccines to the general public and frontline workers.
A total of 77 permanent vaccine centres have been set up in all the mandals of Guntur district. Five of them — SKBM High School (AT Agraharam), Sri Rama Nama Skethram (Sampath Nagar), Lal Jan Basha Function Hall (Lalapet), 140th ward secretariat (Bharathpet) and Sri Krishna Community Hall (Old Guntur) — have been designated as permanent vaccine centres.
District Collector Vivek Yadav, who came up with the vaccine strategy, said that the inoculation drive would continue till May 31 during which only the second dose would be administered.
“We have introduced three colour-coded tokens: red for healthcare workers and frontline workers, green for senior citizens and blue for the general public. Commissioners or MPDOs will issue tokens to persons waiting for the second dose. A model of tokens have been provided to all Commissioners and MDOs,” the Collector said.
The tokens would be issued a day before the vaccine date through volunteers to the people and senior citizens and the record would be kept by the VROs/panchayat/ward secretaries. There shall be no provision for giving first dose of vaccine till May 31, 2021 and beneficiaries cannot book slots for the first dose online and all pre-booked slots have been cancelled.
The beneficiaries of the second dose would be communicated either by a phone call or an SMS informing them of the date and location.
The detailed guidelines also include allotment of duties at vaccine centres, setting up of entrance barricades, waiting halls, registration counters and slip issuance counters and observation rooms.