Defence, Home and Housing Ministry asked to compile data for Covid-19 vaccination

Following the Serum Institute, Bharat Biotech and Dr Reddy's applying for Emergency Use Authorisation from DCGI, the national expert group for vaccine administration (NEGVAC) has asked the Ministry of Defence, Home, Housing and Urban Affairs to compile data of their frontline warriors who will be vaccinated with Covid-19 vaccine.

New Delhi: The national expert group for vaccine administration (NEGVAC) has asked Ministry of Defence, Home, Housing and Urban Affairs to compile data of their frontline warriors who will be vaccinated with Covid-19 vaccine.

Following speedy progress of the trial of different Covid-19 vaccine candidates in India, the Health Ministry is anticipating that the vaccine rollout process will be started from January itself.

"We believe that the first vaccine rollout will take place in India by the second week of January," said Dr Giridhar Gyani, director general of Association of Health Care Providers-India in an exclusive interview to ETV Bharat.

He said that the three major vaccine candidates including Serum Institute of India's Covishield, Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN and Dr Reddy's Sputnik V are in Phase III clinical trials in India.

"There are total eight Covid-19 vaccine candidates in India which are doing good. We hope that the drug regulator will also give emergency use authorisation to the three vaccine candidates," said Gyani.

SII, Bharat Biotech and Dr Reddy's have already applied for EUA from India's drug regulator, DCGI.

Significantly, the national task force on vaccine administration headed by Dr VK Paul, member, Niti Aayog had several back to back meetings with the officials of the concerned ministry last week and asked them to compile the complete datasheet as early as possible.

Accordingly, in the first phase, approximately 30 crore population will be vaccinated including 1 crore health workers, 2 crore frontline workers and the remaining population of prioritised age group above 50 years of age with co-morbidities.

Health care providers and workers in health settings come under health care workers group whereas army, air force, navy, coast guard, all central paramilitary forces as well as Assam Rifles, NSG, district police staff, home guards, disaster management volunteers, municipal workers and state police staff comes under frontline workers category.

Officials said that most candidate vaccines follow a 2 dose schedule.

It may be mentioned here that Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla chaired a meeting with top officials over the compilation of data of healthcare workers and frontline workers.

Accordingly, IGP and DGP level officers have been nominated as nodal officers for vaccine rollout process for the paramilitary forces.

"The officials have been asked to speed up their data compilation process as soon as possible," officials said.

Significantly, the entire vaccination process will be conducted by leveraging information and communication technology system through which the beneficiary will be enrolled through DigiLocker process.

The health ministry has chalked out a vaccine beneficiary registration process following which the beneficiary will also be provided with vaccination certificate after completion of vaccination.