The Telangana government has put in place arrangements, including storage, for the COVID-19 vaccines and can administer the shot to about three core eligible population in the state over a period of one month, a health department official said on Tuesday.
About 10 lakh people can be vaccinated in the state per day, he said, two days after the country's drug regulator gave approval for restricted emergency use of Oxford's Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute, and Covaxin of Bharat Biotech here.
The state government has created the capacity to store at least three crore vaccine doses — 1.5 crore doses at the state vaccination centre and another 1.5 crore at 10 other places, he said. In addition to this, one crore doses can be stored in freezers in about 1,000 hospitals in the state, he said.
"That means acquiring the capacity for our state even if the (vaccine) is to be given at one go to the 3.5 or four crore population that we have," the official said. One round of vaccination can be completed in one month by covering about 10 lakh people per day and the total number of the eligible would be less than three crore after exclusion of children and others, he said.
The administration of booster dose can be completed in the second month. The whole programme can be completed in two months if the Centre directs vaccination of the entire population (eligible people), he said. The state government already has 17 insulated vaccine transport vehicles and 19 more such vehicles were being acquired to ensure that the regular vaccination programme did not suffer, he said.
The infrastructure was almost in place to store the COVID-19 vaccines, being developed in the country, at the desired temperature levels, he said adding vaccination was not new. Front line personnel like health care staff have been identified in the priority category as per the present indication from the Centre, he said.
State Health Minister Eatala Rajender has recently said the state had trained about 10,000 personnel for administering the vaccine and it has the capacity to cover about ten lakh people a day.
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