TELANGANA READY TO DISTRIBUTE COVID VACCINE, TRACE UK RETURNEES

Hyderabad: The Telangana government is ready to distribute vaccines and all arrangements have been made in this regard. The phase-I vaccination will be given to healthcare staff from government and private sector and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) staff. Freezers have been set up to store the vaccine in the state.

Dr Srinivas Rao, Director of health and family welfare of Telangana, told The Daily Guardian, “As per the government’s instruction, we have made all arrangements to distribute the Covid vaccine to maximum people and training for the staff has also been completed at state and district level. Mandal level committees will be formed with PHCs. We formed cold chain management. We have storage facilities and we follow the Union government’s rules to distribute in a phased manner. The first vaccine will be given to healthcare workers, both in public and private sectors, later to police and municipal workers. All of them should upload in the website their details. We can store 3 crore doses in Telangana. We are expecting 1.6 crore doses now to Telangana. Vaccinators are ready with us. Each one will do 100 vaccines every day. We can vaccinate 10 lakh people a day. We can finish vaccination throughout state within two weeks.”

On the other hand, the Telangana medical and health department has decided to conduct medical tests on 1,200 passengers who travelled to the state directly from the United Kingdom after 9 December. The department has appealed to all those who came directly to the state from the UK after 9 December or had travelled through the UK to provide their details by calling on 040-24651119 or text on WhatsApp to 9154170960.

The health department staff will visit their homes and conduct the test. The health authorities said they are fully alert following the impact of a new strain of coronavirus in the UK and some other countries. Dr Ramesh Reddy, Director of medical Education of Telangana told The Daily Guardian, “There are about 1,200 people came to Telangana from UK. We are trying to trace them all. If there are any adverse effects of the Covid vaccine, we are ready to tackle; we have made separate hospitals for that treatment. The Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences will deal with it; there are two or three floors exclusively for this kind of people. We are ready to tackle the new Covid strain and are trying to trace all 1,200 UK returnees. None of the UK returnees have tested positive so far. With the government’s timely decisions and measures and with people’s cooperation, the state has been successful in controlling the spread of the virus and the number of deaths.”