BENGALURU: After the arrival of Covishield vaccine vials on Tuesday, their distribution to most of the districts began on Wednesday afternoon and the exercise will be completed in a couple of days, ready to be administered on January 16.Arundhati Chandrashekar, Managing Director, National Health Mission (NHM), said, “The Covid-19 vaccine distribution to the districts began on Wednesday afternoon, and will be completed in one or two days.
We have the regular vaccine transportation vans we use for immunisations to collect vials from Bengaluru or the five other regional storage facilities.”Totally, there are 88 vaccine stores in Karnataka’s immunisation cold chain network. The two largest state storage facilities are in Bengaluru and Belagavi.
State has got 7.9 lakh vaccine doses so far
Besides, there are five regional vaccine storage (RVS) spaces in Chitradurga, Kalaburagi, Dakshina Kannada, Mysuru and Bagalkot. On Wednesday, Belagavi received 1.45 lakh vaccine vials in the storage facility which were picked up for further distribution to vaccine stores in other districts. “The vaccine vials will be be sent to eight district headquarters — Bagalkot, Hubbali, Dharwad, Haveri, Gadag, Koppal, Uttara Kannada and Belagavi,” explained District Health Officer (DHO) Dr Shashikant Munyal.
Some other districts are waiting for the go-ahead from Bengaluru to collect the vials. Vijayapura District Health Officer Dr M M Kapse said, “We will receive an intimation from Bengaluru when and from where to pick up the vaccines. It may either be from Belagavi or Bagalkot. We usually collect vaccines from Bagalkot for other regular immunisations like polio, measles, etc. We have the necessary cold storage boxes to transport the vaccines in temperatures of 2-8 degrees celsius.”
So far, the state has got 7,93,710 vaccine doses, wherein Belgavi has got 1,46,750 doses while Bengaluru has 6,46,960. The vaccine is for 15,730 central health care workers (CHCW) followed by 7,75,400 state health care workers and 2,580 armed forces medical services.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits will get the highest number of vials with a total of 2,10,080 dosages which includes 1,580 vaccines for central health care workers and 2,08,500 vaccine for the state health care workers. Dakshina Kannada will get 48,450 doses, Mysuru 41,460 , Belagavi 35,960, Bengaluru Urban 37,610 doses, and Dharwad 28,380. Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar pointed out that 20,000 doses of Covaxin will be arriving in the state soon and both the vaccines will be given in the state, but the recipients cannot choose. He said the central government has issued guidelines regarding which district and which staff have to be given the vaccination. All districts will be given the vaccines and the vaccination drive will be inaugurated on January 16.