Jagan to attend COVID-19 vaccination inauguration in Vijayawada

India is gearing up for the nationwide roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine in 3,000 locations across the country for all health care workers. AP has identified 332 locations for the launch of the vaccination programme. The number of locations will be increased gradually to cover all health facilities in the state, the state government said on Friday.

It said that in the next 15 days, all health care workers in the state will be vaccinated and after 28 days the second dose will be administered to them. Other frontline workers like the police, municipal and revenue staff and those who worked in the frontlines during the pandemic will be vaccinated in the next phase, it further said.

The state has received 4.7 lakhs doses of Covishield (Serum institute of India) and 20,000 doses of Covaxin (Bharat Biotech). Also, 4.7 lakh doses of Covishield have been distributed to districts and have reached 332 locations where the programme is being launched.

Every location has three rooms - a vaccinating room, a waiting room, and an observation room. At each location, a team of six staff will vaccinate 100 beneficiaries per day. Each team will be supervised by a doctor. A total of 2,324 staff will work to vaccinate over 33,200 health care workers per day. On Friday, SMS messages were sent to all beneficiaries who have been identified for vaccination. The same will be done every day.

Pregnant women, those aged below 18 years, and those persons who have any contraindications for any vaccine will not be vaccinated. The state has also said that COVID-19 guidelines must be maintained at the vaccination sites, like masks, hand hygiene, and maintaining physical distance.