Vaccination rollout to begin
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today hold a virtual meeting today with the Chief Ministers of all states to scrutinize the COVID-19 situation and roll out of vaccination as India is all set to begin its immunization drive from January 16. The two vaccines- Covaxin and Covishield got a green light from drug regulators in India for emergency use and since then this will be the first interaction PM Modi will be holding with Chief Ministers.
The preparation to vaccinate India’s population against COVID-19 has already begun and two dry runs across the country have been conducted. In the statement given by the government it suggests that around 3 crore health workers will be the first priority list in the vaccination drive against COVID-19. Out of the three crore in the priority list around one crore will be the health care workers and around two crore of the front line staff like- doctors, police and community health workers, as they were directly involved in fighting the pandemic.
An app named Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (COWIN) which is an integrated app will be used to administer the nationwide immunization drive. The digitally supporting infrastructure has yet not been launched, but it will compel to provide Aadhaar numbers to authenticate vaccine recipients and send text messages in at least 12 languages with the details of vaccination, date and time. For the general public there will be 3 options by which they will register i.e. self, individual (official helps in uploading data) and bulk upload.
India’ drug regulators have allowed the Oxford’s Covishield vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin for emergency and restricted use in the country. For maximum protection against the virus two doses of each is required. These two vaccines are also easy to transport and need not be stored in cold temperatures.
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