NEW DELHI (DIVYA SAINI): The vaccination for corona virus could take a year or more in the country, says Union ministry of health and family welfare.
“There are five key principles for this entire exercise which will last maybe beyond one year,” said Union health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday.
The health secretary also added that there will be a sequential roll-out of Covid-19 vaccine, depending on the availability of the vaccine.
The healthcare workers are and the frontline workers who are estimated to be around 30 million have top priorities for vaccination against COVID- 19, followed by those above 50 years of age and the under-50 population groups with co-morbidities numbering around 270 million.
“When Covid-19 outbreak started, non-Covid health care services were hugely affected. We do not want that to be repeated. There maybe a short delay of certain services where we might have to reschedule certain programmes but no service will be shut in future when Covid-19 vaccination drive is on. And since governments are guided by scientific norms and standard operating procedures, and therefore, transparent, we would expect that everyone would scrupulously follow these SOPs while the vaccination
rolls out in the country. Also, the entire process is technology driven,” he said.
The main focus is to ensure people’s participation, and to utilize experiences of elections, such as the booth strategy, and the universal immunisation programme, no compromise of existing health care services, especially national programmes and primary health care, no compromise on scientific and regulatory norms, other standard operating procedures and orderly and smooth technology driven implementation etc.
The vaccination roll out will begin from January 16, 2021 with 10 million healthcare workers from across the country.
The center has already conducted three phases of dry runs across the country, the third dry was conducted on Friday across 615 districts covering 4,895 session sites in 33 States/UTs.
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