Jharkhand will be receiving at least 148 ice lined refrigerators (ILR) and 57 deep freezers (DF) from the Centre for safe storage and transportation of the Covid-19 vaccine once it is made available to the state, officials of the health department said here on Sunday.
The fresh set of ice lined refrigerators (ILR) and deep freezers (DF) will strengthen the state’s existing infrastructure for vaccination programmes, said state National Health Mission (NHM) director Ravi Shankar Shukla. “We are making arrangements in accordance with the guidelines of the ministry of health and family welfare,” he added.
As per figures with the NHM, Jharkhand already has 1,666 electrical equipment for running vaccination programmes. These include ILRs and DFs. ILRs, officials said, maintain a temperature between 2 degree Celsius and 8 degree Celsius, while DFs help maintain a temperature below 0 degrees for vaccine storage. Deep freezers are also used for maintaining requisite temperature during transportation of vaccines.
For storage of the vaccine, Jharkhand already has 275 cold chain points and has proposed additional 30 cold chain points to enhance the storage capacity in the state, a health department document accessed by The Telegraph Online stated.
A highly placed source in the health department said the government has also started identifying electrical equipment that are defunct or dated and need to be replaced. He said that the government has the experience of running immunisation programmes regularly, but the demand for Covid-19 vaccine and the temperature restrictions may make the immunisation process more challenging.
Different vaccines have different temperature requirements to maintain potency. The Pfizer BioNtech vaccine requires a temperature of -60 to -90 degree Celsius, which is difficult to maintain with the infrastructure available in India. However, Oxford’s AstraZenecca vaccine can be kept at a temperature of 2 degree Celsius to 8 degree Celsius, which is possible with the infrastructure available in Jharkhand, officials said. Besides, Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila are developing their own vaccine candidates.
Health officials said the government will also be roping in NGOs and development partners like UNDP and UNICEF for facilitating the immunisation programme in Jharkhand. National Cadet Corps (NCC) and National Service Scheme (NSS) cadets will also be involved in providing support to the state machinery during the immunisation process.
