World’s Biggest Vaccination Drive Starts In India On January 16: Who Will Be Vaccinated?

After the nationwide dry run of the COVID 10 vaccination, India is all set to carry out the actual process of making the country immune to the pandemic. On Saturday, the Health Ministry announced that the final vaccination process will start on January 16.

Priority For Access To Vaccination

The part of the population which is at higher risk of getting affected will be vaccinated on priority. Hence the healthcare and frontline workers will be the first to get the vaccination owing to their exposure to the virus. According to Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan vaccination will be free for these 3 crore people.

The next priority will be granted to the people aged more than 50 years and the ones who are suffering from comorbidity. The vaccination will be on a voluntary basis for this group of 27 crore people.

Vaccines Approved For Distribution

Shortly after the announcement, a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was conducted to carry out the assessment of the preparations made by all states and union territories.

According to the release, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization has given the emergency use authorization to two vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, which have emerged to be most promising in terms of safety and immunogenicity.

Digital Platform To Monitor The Process

“The vaccination exercise will use the principles of people’s participation (Jan Bhagidari), experience of elections (booth strategy) and Universal Immunization Program (UIP). There will be no compromise of existing healthcare services, especially national programs and primary health care. We aim for it to be an orderly and smooth implementation driven by technology,”

The Ministry elaborated, “The digital platform will provide real time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries of the COVID-19 vaccine,” 

This platform already has 79 lakh people registered in it. It is introduced with the intention of assisting the program managers in regards to allocation of time slot and verification to registered recipients, generation of a digital certificate of successful vaccination.

Vaccination Task Force

The Ministry highlighted that there are 2,360 first-rate employees including State immunization officers, cold chain officers, IEC officials, development partners trained at national level training programs. Besides the complete physical force behind the vaccination process includes 61,000 program managers, two lakh vaccinators, and 3.7 lakh other vaccination team members who were trained locally.

“The third dry run was conducted on Friday across 615 districts covering 4,895 session sites in 33 States/UTs. After the detailed review, it was decided that in view of the forthcoming festivals including Lohri, Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Magh Bihu, etc. the COVID-19 vaccination will start following the festivals,” the Ministry added.