Ahead of the dry-run for Covid-19 vaccine in the national capital, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday held a review meeting with the Delhi government officials for the preparations of the mock drill, which is scheduled for 2 January.
The minister was speaking to the Delhi government officials via video-conference. He said the procedure of the vaccination drive is similar to the election preparations. “The procedure of the vaccination drive is the same as the election. In any election, we train people at the booth the same way. We need more manpower so we have to train the people here who can look after the proposed beneficiaries,” the Health Minister said.
“Over 2,000 master trainers at the national level have been trained. Training at state and district level is underway in over 700 districts,” the minister added.
Regarding the target of the vaccination drive, Vardhan said, in this mock drill every detail will be covered.
“Aim of this exercise is to ensure that the minute details are thoroughly researched. Cold storage, temperature, electricity and arrangement of the injections, staff and the challenges, which will come forward during the drive will be studied in the drill,” he said.
Harsh Vardhan said at least two vaccine makers have sent their applications to Drug Controller and experts for approval and the details are being studied thoroughly. Simultaneously we are preparing the medical staff for the drive.
“Doctors, medical staff, frontline workers who will be working under this drive are listed up and the list will be uploaded on Covid-19 platform,” he said.
“The dry-run for coronavirus vaccine will be held at Daryaganj, GTB Hospital and one private hospital in Delhi,” he said. The minister hoped that 2021 will be better than 2020.
4 UK COVID VARIANT CASES DETECTED IN INDIA, TALLY 29
The Central government on Friday said that four more cases of the mutant Covid UK strain have been detected in the country, taking the total tally of such cases to 29 so far. They are kept in physical isolation in health facilities.
Out of these 29 cases, eight have been registered at National Centre for Disease Control in Delhi, two at CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi, 10 at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences in Bangalore.
Three such cases have been detected at Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, five at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences in Bangalore, and one at National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in West Bengal.
On Tuesday, a total of six UK returnees were found to be positive with the new variant genome. These were the first cases to be reported by the country that has the second highest number of cases after the United States.
The British Government had recently announced that the newly identified strain of the virus found in their population is up to 70 per cent more transmissible.
Notably, the new UK variant has already been reported by Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
From November 25 to December 23 midnight, about 33,000 passengers disembarked at various Indian airports from UK. All these passengers are being tracked and subjected by states and UTs to RT-PCR tests.
With agency inputs