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Distribution Of COVID-19 Vaccine – How India Is Planning?
From cargo planes to vans, the Center is planning to use the air and road transport network to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
The subject expert committee will hold a meeting under the CDSCO to consider the EUA of vaccines from 3 firms – Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech, and Pfizer. The board is checking the data from safety and potency tests performed by the Serum Institute of India. The vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca gained regulative permission in the United Kingdom.
The distribution plan of COVID-19 vaccine:
- According to the authorities, special freight planes with cold boxes, storage space, and refrigerated vans will start transporting vaccine vials to different parts of the country from SII’s vaccine manufacturing centers located in Pune.
- The vaccine vials will be distributed to district authorities by the state administrations to make it available in thousands of vaccination centers to be set up across India, which will certainly take several weeks.
- The first set of vaccine batches will be sent only to government medical facilities, public health centers, or large private hospitals. These centers will be used to vaccinate the first 2 priority groups of health care and other frontline workers like police personnel.
- Places like polling booths, wedding halls, community centers, and vans will certainly be used as vaccination centers to vaccinate the remaining high-risk populace of senior citizens and people suffering from comorbidities.
- An order with particular details of the COVID-19 vaccine’s number of vials (each vial of the vaccine will contain multiple doses) to be shipped to every destination will be sent to SII by the nationwide specialist expert.
- As per the authorities, the transportation of vaccines will be done via air and roadway and, the refrigerated vans of Indian Railways will not be used as of now. For centers near Pune, vaccines would be shipped by road, and for faraway destinations, cargo flights will be used.
- The Serum Institute of India will take the obligation of delivering the vaccines at the designated centers. However, the logistics and cold chains will be tracked mainly by the Govt. Serum Institute of India has the responsibility to supply the vaccine securely at certain sites and hand it over to the state or central authorities. After the handover, the reliability of further distribution will be with the Govt authorities.
- The Govt has set up consignee points or sites for handing over vaccine deliveries to the states in capital cities and prominent city centers.
- Govt Medical Store Depots in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and Karnal, and state and regional vaccine stores will be the centers to stock the vaccines. The vaccines will be transported to the final destination – Primary Health Centers and Community Health Centers, in Refrigerated vans.
- As per the authorities, the vaccines will be transported from states and local stores to divisions, and districts would be carried out in cold boxes employing vaccine vans. Vaccines will be transported from primary health centers to villages using ice packs in vaccine carriers.
