NEW DELHI: As India is gearing up for its vaccination drive, the Government of India has announced that it will deploy its vast election machinery to deliver 60 crore doses of COVID vaccines to 30 crore Indians. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) issued a draft of standard operating procedures (SOP) to all the states and union territories and stated that at least 100 people should get vaccinated each day at every site. If sufficient resources are available, then each site can vaccinate upto 200 people per day. The SOP mentioned that a vaccination site ought to have three rooms or areas including waiting room, vaccination room and observation room.
Dr VK Paul, Niti Aayog member and head of National Expert Group on COVID-19 vaccination, said that the central government has lined up cold storage facilities with temperatures between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and that the capacity of the syringes and needles have also been built up to the store. According to the plan developed by MoHFW, the coronavirus vaccine will be first given to health care workers, frontline workers, and people above 50 years. After this, vaccines are to be given to those who are below 50 years of age and are suffering from a chronic critical illness. The rest of the population will be given COVID-19 vaccine whenever it will be ready for public use, keeping in view the spread and availability of the disease.
The government is planning on identifying those above 50 years of age based on the voter list prepared in the Lok Sabha elections and assembly elections. The SOP by MoHFW also mentioned that the beneficiaries of the vaccine will be tracked through a digital platform called Co-WIN. All information on this platform will be updated in real time.