As the country is all set to begin vaccination drive against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) from January 16, the Delhi government has identified 89 sites which include 36 state-run hospitals and 53 private hospitals, health minister Satyendar Jain said on Sunday.
Jain also said that only health workers will be administered shots against the Covid-19 in the first phase of the vaccination drive.
The list of hospitals includes AIIMS, Safdarjung, Lok Nayak, GTB, and Hindu Rao, among others. The list of private hospitals includes Max, Fortis, Apollo, BL Kapur, and Gangaram, etc. Vaccines to all the centers will be supplied by the Delhi government and will be free for the beneficiaries.
The Centre on Saturday said that the Covid-19 vaccination drive would begin in the country on January 16, when nearly 30 million healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated. In the second phase, priority will be given to those above 50 years of age and the under-50 population groups with co-morbidities, together numbering around 27 crores.
As per the ministry, over 61,000 program managers, 200,00 vaccinators, and 370,000 other vaccination team members have been trained so far as part of the training at the states, districts, and block levels.
India’s drugs controller on January 3 granted restricted emergency approval to two companies for their Covid-19 vaccines.
The first vaccine to become available in Delhi will likely be the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, called Covishield in India, and manufactured by Pune’s Serum Institute of India. The other vaccine that has been granted approval for “restricted use in emergency situations” is Bharat Biotech’s Cavoxin.
As of Sunday morning, the country has a total of 10,450,284 confirmed cases of Covid-19, according to the numbers published on the Union health ministry’s website. The number of recoveries reached 10,075,950 after more than 19,200 patients recovered from the viral disease in the span of 24 hours. More than 1.5 lakh people have died so far.
The spread of the virus has been majorly contained in the country as the daily number of new cases has dropped to less than 20,000 from a peak of almost 98,000 in September last year. However, it is still the second worst-hit country after the United States.