COVID-19 vaccination likely to begin in India by January 12

The muchanticipated inoculation programme against Covid19 in the country is expected to begin by January 12 government sources told IANSIn all likelihood the Covid immunisation drive is expected to start early next week Considering the preparations the rollout may start on January 11 or latest by January 12 a senior government official inducted in the vaccine distribution programme saidThe sources also informed that the government has started preparing the freight carrying the vaccine vials for transportation to different hubs located across the country The agencies involved in the vaccine rollout programme will start dispatching the vaccine vials from Thursday onwards they addedThe dispatch is expected to start late on Thursday evening or early in the day on Friday the officials saidAs per the information received the vaccines from their manufacturing units will be transported to the central hub in Pune From there they will be moved to regional hubs situated at different locations across the countryIANS was told that Karnal in Haryana and Delhi will serve as regional hubs for the storage and rollout of the vaccines in the northern part of the country Chennai and Hyderabad will serve as regional hubs for the distribution of vaccines in southern India For the eastern part Kolkata is designated as the distribution point while the distribution in the western region of the country will be covered by the central hub onlyHowever no official announcement has been made by the government yet apart from the official statement that the immunisation drive will start within 10 days from the date of approval of the vaccines The vaccines Covaxin by Bharat Biotech and Covishield by Serum Institute of India were approved for emergency use authorisation on January 3Meanwhile Suneela Garg public health expert and professor of excellence at the Maulana Azad Medical College who is also a key member of the task force handling vaccination in Delhi said that the government should start the immunisation drive by January 12 as the preliminaries have been finalisedAll the arrangements for the rollout have been made and the scheduled dry run would confirm the preparations The vaccine doses are ready to be dispatched After the dry run there would be no reason to delay the rollout The government should start immunisation by January 12 she addedThe second nationwide dry run for Covid vaccine is set to be conducted across 33 states and Union Territories on Friday The mock drill will be conducted in all the districts of the country except for Uttar Pradesh and Haryana since the former has already conducted dry run on January 5 while the latter conducted it on ThursdayThe first dummy drive was held on January 2 where only five districts had taken placeUnion Health Minister Harsh Vardhan met the health ministers of states and Union Territories on Thursday and guided them on conducting the dry runThe government has trained around 17 lakh vaccinators and 3 lakh vaccination team members for the process to be followed at the vaccination centres during the inoculation drive which would include beneficiary verification vaccination cold chain and logistics management biomedical waste management Adverse Effect Following Immunisation AEFI management and reporting on the CoWIN softwareKeep scrolling to read more newsCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest newsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever