The district administration is all set to administer the COVID -19 vaccine to health workers from January 16.
The vaccination programme will be launched virtually by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Chinawaltair Public Health Centre.
According to the district administration, about 32 session sites or vaccination sites have been selected for the first phase in the district, including a few in the Visakha agency.
The task force committee, which will be overlooking the vaccination programme, had met on Monday, and the modalities were finalised.
Speaking to The Hindu , District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar said that the vaccines will reach the city in a day or two and will be stored in the freezers at the District Immunology Department, thereafter they will be despatched to the respective session sites in frozen containers. The challenge is to maintain the temperature between 2° and 8° Celsius, he said.
At present, each session site will handle around 100 people per day, which cumulatively will be around 3,200 vaccinations per day.
In the first phase, the vaccines will be administered to health workers and about 34,761 health workers, including doctors, nurses, paramedic staff, lab assistants, ministerial staff, ANM and Aasha workers, have been identified. The vaccine will be administered in two shots of 0.5 ml of dosage per injection. The second dosage will be given in 28 days or after three weeks.
According to District Collector V. Vinay Chand, the list of the health workers have been fed in the CoWin app and every health worker will receive an SMS indicating the date, time and address of the session site.
All session sites will have three rooms comprising one waiting room, one vaccination room and one observation room.
After the vaccination process, everyone will be kept under observation for 30 minutes and if there is any adverse reaction, he or she will be shifted immediately to the nearest biggest hospital, which have already been identified, said Dr. Sudhakar.
The district has also constituted an AEFI (Adverse Event Following Immunisation) committee, comprising a cardiologist, neurologist, neuro surgeon, general physician and anaesthesiologist, and the observation process will be monitored by them. Dr. Sudhakar has been made chairman of the District AEFI (Adverse Event Following Immunization) to deal with any untoward incidents.
