On Tuesday, when Maharashtra acquired its first tranche of 9.83 lakh vaccine doses, State Health Minister Rajesh Tope mentioned it should take a month to inoculate the state’s 7.86 lakh healthcare staff. The state authorities plans to vaccinate 35,000 healthcare staff on January 16, the primary day of the rollout.
Tope mentioned that Maharashtra is able to spend on procurement of vaccines if the Centre stops provide after providing the preliminary batches. Refuting the claims that he believes that the preliminary provide is inadequate, as being reported by a piece of media, the minister claimed: “We have 7.8 lakh registered healthcare workers. To give them two doses 28 days apart, we need 15.6 lakh doses. About 10 per cent doses are expected to get wasted during the immunisation. Considering that, we need over 17.1 lakh doses for the healthcare workers. We have received 9.83 lakh doses, and we expect more stock to arrive soon. We don’t know by when.” Of 9.83 lakh doses, 9.63 lakh are of Covishield from Serum Institute of India, whereas 20,000 are Covaxin doses from Bharat Biotech.
Maharashtra earlier finalised 511 vaccination centres throughout the state, however following path from the Centre, it has decreased the full centres to 358. “There were multiple reasons for reducing the number of centres. Since this is a new vaccine, we wanted adverse events to be managed at the hospital level so that proper monitoring can be done,” Tope mentioned.]
The state authorities plans to finish the first-dose vaccination of seven.86 lakh well being staff in a month. Teams from the United Nations Development Programme can be roped in to deal with logistical points on the vaccination centres.
Dr Archana Patil, director of Family Welfare within the Directorate of Health Services, mentioned they’re slowly scaling up the immunisation course of to cowl all the inhabitants in phases. “We don’t want to give vaccines to everyone at one go. The stock of 9.83 lakh doses will be used for half of the registered health workers so that both doses of the same vaccine are given to each person. When the next stock comes, we will rope in more beneficiaries,” she mentioned, including that there is no such thing as a hurry in immunising all beneficiaries. “We also want to monitor the vaccinated population.”
Tope mentioned, on January 16, he’ll congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and work together with him from the Jalna vaccination centre the place a two-way communication system has been arrange between vaccine beneficiaries and the Prime Minister.
The minister has added that the state will procure vaccines by itself when the Centre stops the availability. “During our video conference, the Prime Minister said they will wait for 60 per cent of vaccination (of health workers and front line workers) to get over before further talks on vaccine supply are taken up. We will wait until then,” Tope mentioned.
The Union well being ministry has assured all states that it’s going to present the preliminary inventory to immunise 30 crore precedence inhabitants comprising healthcare and frontline staff. Maharashtra has an inventory of seven.86 lakh well being staff and about 20 lakh frontline staff, together with police, municipal employees, defence, BEST drivers and conductors.
A senior official from the Maharashtra well being ministry mentioned the Centre has been supportive in procuring and distributing private protecting gear and N-95 masks on the onset of pandemic. “We are, therefore, not planning state-level procurement of vaccines yet. The Centre has assured us to provide some stocks, and we will wait for them to send,” the official added.
The well being minister has indicated that vaccines have to be free for the poor. “Those who are vulnerable can’t be left to their fate. We have not prepared any budget for procurement of vaccines yet but it can be prepared through a contingency fund,” he mentioned.
The authorities has excluded pregnant girls, these vulnerable to allergic reactions and kids aged beneath 18 years from vaccination.