Amritsar, NFA Post: The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has set out operational guidelines for Covid-19 vaccination, according to which the vaccine will first be offered to healthcare workers, frontline workers, and to persons above 50 years of age.
The next in line to get the vaccination would be persons younger than 50 years of age with associated co-morbidities based on the evolving pandemic situation, and then finally to the remaining population based on the disease epidemiology and vaccine availability, the ministry stated.
In its guidelines that has been shared with all states, the ministry also added that the priority group of above 50 years may be further sub-divided into those above 60 years and those between 50-to-60 years for the purpose of phasing of rollout based on the pandemic situation and vaccine availability.
“The latest electoral roll for Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections will be used to identify people aged 50 years or more. The COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) system, a digitalised platform, will be used to track the enlisted beneficiaries for vaccination on a real-time basis. At the vaccination site, only pre-registered beneficiaries will be vaccinated in accordance with the prioritisation and there will be no provision for on-the-spot registration,” the ministry said.
The Centre said that it is planning to vaccinate people in sessions, with each session having 100 beneficiaries. Most of the healthcare and frontline workers will be vaccinated at fixed session sites, while vaccination of other high-risk populations may require outreach session sites, and mobile sites or teams. States and UTs can identify specific days for vaccination, it added.
The guidelines stated that vaccine safety must be ensured during storage, transportation and delivery of vaccine with sufficient deployment of police personnel so that there are no leakages in the delivery system.
The government has asked states to allocate the vaccine from one manufacturer to a district to avoid mixing of different vaccines in the field.
It also added that the inoculators should monitor vaccinated persons and immediately report to the vaccination officer if there is any adverse reaction.
