THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The state has set the wheels in motion for making available Covid-19 vaccine to healthcare workers. According to the National Health Mission - Kerala, respective district programme managers were asked to upload the data of health workers who are in direct contact with Covid patients in each district to a centralised database. The uploading process which is already on will have to be completed by the end of this month.
At the same time, health officials said that they are awaiting further orders from the National Expert Group on Covid-19 Vaccine (NEGVAC) for the distribution of the vaccine. The Central government had stated recently that once the vaccination programme starts, the first priority will be health workers.
“In the state, respective State Mission Director of NHM and State Immunisation Officer will coordinate the entire exercise. For monitoring the updation process, NEGVAC itself has deputed UNDP senior project officer Dr Rosin George Varghese,” said an officer of the health department.
According to the officer, the entry of healthcare workers will be made on a template shared by the Health Management Information System. As per the instructions, a separate template needs to be filled for each health facility (government and private) within the district. The template allows a maximum of only 1,000 entries of healthcare workers. If a facility has more than that then the new entry should be started in a new template.
“The data compiled at the district level will get uploaded to the Covid-19 Vaccination Beneficiary Management System. Only health workers will be included. Their family members will be excluded. As per a guideline issued by the NEGVAC, health workers at public facilities right from the primary health centres to medical colleges and nursing homes/clinics to corporate hospitals in the private sector will be included in the database. Ayush practitioners will also be included,” said an NHM district programme manager.
It remains unknown
when the vaccination drive will begin. The other day, the health ministry said that the entire vaccination campaign will be linked to Aadhaar so as to avoid any case of duplication or fraudulent activities. At the same time, there are also reports that by December the nation will get 100 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot and the inoculation drive will get started that month itself.
Recoveries exceed new cases for the seventh day in a row
T’Puram: After a dip in the daily test positivity rate (TPR) for the past two days, a slight climb up on the same was witnessed on Saturday, with the day recording 10.33 % . It was 9.68% and 9.97 on Thursday and Friday respectively.
At the same time, for the seventh day in a row and for the 12th time in the month, recoveries exceeded new cases in the daily case tally. The state on Saturday recorded 6,793 recoveries and 6,357 new cases of Covid-19. The deaths that were confirmed as due to Coronavirus were 26, taking the death toll to 1,822. Of the cases reported on the day, 5,542 were contact cases, 645 were cases with unknown source of infection, 107 were returnees and 63 were health workers.