Delhi Seeks Health Workers’ Data For Covid Vaccine By Dec 5 Midnight

KEY STORY

• New Delhi: The Delhi government has directed all public and private medical facilities to finish enrolling their healthcare workers by December 5 midnight for a COVID-19 vaccine, which should be available in a few weeks.

• According to sources, many registered and non-registered facilities have already submitted this data as the process had started in October.

• The government-run facilities that have not completed the task been told to upload the data on Delhi State Health Mission website — https://dshm.delhi.gov.in. Private health facilities will have to seek login access to submit the names.

• Healthcare workers include all medical, para-medical, supporting, security, sanitation and administration staff at centre of allopathy, dentistry, Ayush, physiotherapy, diagnostic and radiology labs.

CONCLUSION

• The directive comes amid similar exercises being held across states, which recently attended a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on evaluating their preparedness for a vaccine rollout, including cold storage facilities and syringe availability.

• India has eight potential vaccine candidates, of which three are indigenous. According to the centre, a vaccine would be available in a few weeks and would be first administered to about 1 crore health workers, then 2 crore frontline workers and then high-risk individuals.

• Some attendees from the opposition parties asked the government to include downtrodden in the first list of people to be vaccinated.

• This was the second all-party meeting called by the government on the matter since the outbreak of the pandemic in India in January.

• This meeting assumes significance as it is being held following Prime Minister Modi’s visit to top pharmaceutical companies in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, and Pune to review the coronavirus vaccine development work in each of these facilities.