Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday said the government is in the process of ensuring vaccination of all and the drive will start soon. Vardhan was in Chennai to oversee the anti-coronavirus vaccination dry run at the Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital and also the storage facilities for the Covid-19 vaccine.
He said India has developed two anti-coronavirus vaccines which have been sanctioned for emergency use and this has happened within a year after the Covid-19 pandemic broke in the country.
Speaking to reporters Vardhan said the Covid-19 vaccine will be administered first to the healthcare professionals, frontline workers, army and paramilitary personnel, sanitary workers and in the next phase, people aged over 50 years and those below 50 but with comorbidities will be vaccinated first.
"In a short time, India has done well by developing vaccines. In the next few days, shortly, we should be able to give these vaccines to our countrymen. It will be given to our healthcare professional followed by frontline workers. Lakhs of healthcare workers are being trained through these dry runs, and the process to train more is still going on,” Vardhan said.
He also said with two neighbouring countries reporting poliovirus cases, the nation has to take precaution.
Vardhan said January 17 will be termed as the National Immunisation Day Against Polio and appealed that all the children who are less than five years of age will be inoculated with two drops of polio vaccine.
According to Vardhan, in January 2011, the country saw the last case of polio.
He said virtually all the countries in the world have eradicated polio but two neighbouring countries still have significant numbers of polio cases and, hence the Indian population is at risk.
Dr Vardhan is in Tamil Nadu to supervise the dry run drill and is scheduled to visit other sites in Chennai, too, such as the Omandurar hospital, Apollo hospital, and Chengalpattu.
Today, the 2nd nationwide mock drill is being carried at three-session sections in 736 districts across 33 States and Union Territories.
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The dry run tests devised mechanisms for the vaccine programme's roll-out and also evaluates the operational feasibility of using the CoWIN application in a field environment to plan, implement, and report at multiple levels.
Earlier, the vaccine drill conducted on January 2 helped iron out glitches in the programme and refine the procedures.