Indian Government’s vaccination Drive

As India moves closer to start the process of Covid-19 vaccination, the government has managed a list of 70 lakh healthcare workers who will be the first beneficiaries of the vaccination drive across the country. The initial figures of the first phase of lands near about 3 crore workers, across the length and breadth of the country.

An application prepared by the government, “Co-WIN” will be the central focus and will be used for everything at every step of the drive, from initial registration for the vaccine to tracking the after-effects. The latest database created by the central government includes the registration of over 2.30 lakh vaccinators followed by more than 51,000 public health facilities and 1.62 lakh private health facilities.

Flying High.
After Lifeline UDAN, Domestic flight resumption & Vande Bharat Mission, India's Civil Aviation sector now joins the country's efforts against COVID19 by successfully transporting vaccines under Mission Sanjeevani.@flyspicejet @IndiGo6E @goairlinesindia @BlueDart_ pic.twitter.com/BqryMbyHc5

— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) January 14, 2021

The government has also stated that the immunization drive is based “on the learnings of the election process (booth strategy)”. The advantage of being the world’s largest democracy and having a robust and continuing election process is coming in handy to the government in their efforts towards designing a robust vaccination drive. The idea is of booth strategy but at any cost, crowding has to be avoided and therefore many regions have announced that there will not be more than 100 people vaccinated per booth per day. There will be no walk-in vaccination and only a pre-registered person on the Co-WIN app, on the stipulated date and time will be vaccinated. The government has also asked states to announce specific days for vaccination, a sufficiently adequate number of vaccinators and other helping staff for vaccination teams like mobilizers, verifiers (using Co WIN software), and personnel for crowd management.

As far as the cost of vaccination goes, this is clear now that around to vaccinate 3 crore frontline and health workers, the cost will be borne by the central government. This will be administered to them by the states, but beyond that to vaccinate the next 27 crore adults above the age of 50, it is not yet clear who will bear the cost. There are no provisions as of now where the states can directly procure the medicine from the manufacturer and it will be routed from the center only. Although there are many things still in the dark and uncertain here, the vaccination drive is an evolving project of the government and we might see things getting clearer in the future.