Health Ministry charts out preparatory activities for Covid-19 vaccine roll-out

New Delhi, Dec 8 : From line-listing of prioritised groups, strengthening cold chain infrastructure to adding more vaccinators, the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday charted out list of preparatory activities which are being carried out by it in collaboration with states and union territories for roll-out of Covid-19 vaccine.
Addressing the press conference, Health Ministry Secretary Rajesh Bhushan listed out six consultative process and five key strategies the government is adopting to roll out the most-awaited vaccination for the disease, which has wreaked havoc worldwide.
The preparatory activities involves line-listing of prioritised population groups for Covid-19 vaccination, multi-level coordination mechanism, strengthening of cold chain infrastructure, additional vaccinators, communication strategy on vaccine safety, effectiveness etc and Co-WIN, a digital platform for vaccination delivery.
Health Ministry Secretary said that 30 crore people have been listed on prioritised population groups, which involves one crore of healthcare workers, two crores personnel from police department, armed forces, home guard, civil defence organisation and 27 crore people above age of 50 and below 50 with comorbidities.
Secondly, the vaccines are temperature sensitive and need to be stored in specific temperature and hence cold chain system consists of 85,634 equipments for storage of vaccine at about 28,947 cold chain points across the country presently.
“The current cold chain is capable of storing additional quantity of Covid-19 vaccine required for first 3 Crore i.e. health care Workers and front-line Workers,” said Bhushan.