Ahead of the Covid-19 vaccine roll out, the central government circulated the rule book to the states on Thursday. The roll out will begin from tomorrow, it is expected to inoculate 3 lakh healthcare workers across the country.
The Centre’s issued guidelines stated that vaccination will be allowed only for people above the age of 18 years. The pregnant women and lactating mothers will not receive the vaccine shots, said the centre.
The interchangeability of vaccines will not be allowed. People will be administered with the second dose of the same vaccine as they were given as the first dose.
At a gap of 28-days, the vaccines should be administered. Serum Institute’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin have been cleared by the drug regulator for the use in vaccination drive which is commencing from January 16.
The Centre has laid out strict guidelines for people who contracted the virus. Inoculation will have to be deferred for four to eight weeks after recovery of patients with active symptoms. The same practice will be applied to those who have been given plasma therapy and who are unwell and hospitalized for any other reason.
The government has developed Co-WIN, an online digital platform to facilitate the vaccination drive. The application will help monitor real-time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and tracking of vaccine recipients.
A 24 hours hotline number -1075 has also been set up to address queries related to the vaccine roll out. The number of sites will be increased to 5,000 and more, as the vaccination programme will progress. Based on the health workers’ data, the vaccines have been allotted to all the states across the country.
Also Read: 3 lakh healthcare workers to get Covid-19 vaccine on January 16
Amid tight security, the first batches of two vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin were shipped to 13 cities for the first phase of inoculation programme. So far, over 54.72 lakh doses of vaccine has reached the designated national and state-level vaccine stores across the country.