With the pandemic now in its tenth month, India will be confronting its single biggest public health challenge as it prepares to launch the largest-ever mass immunization drive.
India, which has been badly hit by the pandemic with nearly 10 million infections, the second-highest in the world, is focusing on affordable vaccines.
The safe delivery of vaccines to the people is a massive challenge. There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Covid-19 vaccine development globally, and at least 8 vaccine candidates are in critical stages of development and testing in India. All these are expected to pave way for faster access to an approved vaccine in the coming year.
Who Will Be Vaccinated First?
Four categories of people for vaccination in the initial phase has been demarcated, among which there are around one crore healthcare professionals including doctors, MBBS students, nurses, and ASHA workers, etc.
Among groups being identified for the first shots are 10 million health care providers in the government and private sectors and 20 million other front line workers, such as police and armed forces, and and people above 50 years (26 crore)-
- Healthcare Workers: One crore frontline healthcare workers have been identified to receive the first dose of whichever vaccine is available against the novel coronavirus infection early next year.
- Frontline Workers: Around two crore frontline workers including municipal corporation workers, personnel of the police and armed forces.
Roadmap of Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution
Laying out a “realistic” roadmap of Covid-19 vaccine distribution, Indian officials are planning the biggest vaccination campaign in the country’s history.
According to the draft standard operating procedure issued by the Health Ministry, the government is planning to provide anti-corona shots to only 100 per day at each site, unlike standard immunization drives that see hundreds of people being vaccinated in a day.
The government has said it will deploy its vast election machinery to deliver 60 crore doses of Covid vaccines to 30 crore Indians, including healthcare & frontline workers, priority groups above the age of 50, and those under 50 with comorbidities.
How Covid-19 Vaccination Site Would Look Like
Each site will have three rooms — for waiting, vaccination, and observation. The decision to have three rooms for vaccination is keeping in mind the need for social distancing.
While the vaccination room will see only one person enter at each time, the waiting and observation room will have seating for multiple people.
While most of the healthcare and frontline workers would be vaccinated at fixed session sites, vaccination of other high-risk populations may require outreach session sites, and mobile sites and teams.
As per the handbook, the vaccination team will consist of five members- each team will comprise five officers — a doctor/staff nurse/pharmacist/anyone legally authorised to administer an injection, an official from the police, home guard or civil defence to check the registration status of the beneficiary, another officer to authenticate or verify documents and two other officers to provide support and help in awareness generation.
App To Help People Register For COVID-19 Vaccine
The beneficiaries will be tracked through a digital platform called Co-WIN. All information on this platform will be updated in real-time.
Co-WIN a digital platform for real-time monitoring of Covid-19 vaccine delivery, recording data, and to enable people to get themselves registered for vaccination.
It will verify beneficiary details and update vaccination status while the beneficiary acknowledgment module will send SMS to beneficiaries and also generate QR-based certificates after one gets vaccinated.
Vaccine Status
At present, six vaccines are in the clinical trial stage. And there are three vaccines in the pre-clinical stage. Some of them may get licensed in the coming weeks.
US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer became the first to seek a similar approval from India’s drug regulator for its Covid-19 vaccine in the country
India is also actively considering two other vaccine candidates — one being developed by the Serum Institute of India with AstraZeneca and Oxford University and the second one by Bharat Biotech.
The applications of Pfizer, SII, and Bharat Biotech are being reviewed by the subject expert committee (SEC) on Covid-19 at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).
Sputnik-V, ZyCoV-D, Zydus Cadila are some prominent names from India that are in the race of mass-producing vaccines once the trials are completed successfully.
