Vijayawada: All is set for administration of Covid-19 vaccine Covishield at the rate of 100 doses each, one per person, at 332 session sites per day beginning from January 16 to 20 in Andhra Pradesh.
As the state government received 4.99 lakh doses of vaccine including 4.77 lakh doses of Covishield and 20,000 doses of Covaxin from respective firms in the last two days, state health authorities distributed vaccine doses from the central vaccine store to districts and from there to select primary health centres by Wednesday afternoon.
As per the state government’s plan, administration of Covid-19 vaccine will be officially launched at the government hospital in Vijayawada and at the government hospital in China Waltair on January 16. At the same time, health authorities will commence administration of the vaccine in other identified session sites all over the state.
In addition to the administration of vaccine in AP, the state government will also supply 320 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to be administered in Yanam. Armed personnel in Visakhapatnam are also to be given the Covid-19 vaccine.
As the vaccine doses have reached the session sites, state health authorities advised the energy department to avoid any disruption in power supply to session sites in order to continue the cold chain without disruption. The vaccine is supposed to be stored in the cold chain at a temperature between 2 C and 8 C.
The authorities also directed the officials taking care of the session sites to keep power backup that is supposed to start automatically in case of any disruption in power supply.
State health authorities maintain that as per initial plan, they will be administering 100 doses of vaccine at each session site for five days from January 16 to 20; which meant the health authorities will administer 500 doses of vaccine at each session site.
Given the number of vaccine doses received so far, the health authorities planned accordingly. Initially, only Covishield will be used as AP received 4.77 lakh doses. If a beneficiary is given the first dose of Covishield, he or she has to be given the same vaccine as the second dose with a gap of 28 days.
“Until we receive further doses of Covaxin, we will use only Covishield for jabs,” officials said. Director of health Dr T. Geeta Prasadini said, “We have planned meticulously for administration of Covid-19 vaccine to all targeted beneficiaries from January 16 to 20, initially and we are holding consultations with all stakeholders to identify issues, if any, and resolve them.”
