Indian Government plan for storage of Covid-19 vaccine |
India has started to make logistical arrangements as several COVID-19 vaccine candidates are reaching advanced stages of the trial. The government is arranging for procurement, storage and distribution to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of a vaccine, when these become available. The Modi government has begun identifying both government and private facilities to create hubs for vaccine storage. The focus is on maintaining cold storage as most vaccines require to be stored and distributed at a fixed temperature, failing which the vaccine becomes ineffective. Under the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19, sub-groups have already mapped the existing cold chains which are presently being utilized under the immunisation programme. At present, those subgroups are engaged in mapping the private sector facilities that could be converted with few modifications to serve the needs of supplementing the cold chain equipment. Real-time tracking of vaccine movement- from procurement to storage, to delivery and distribution is being planned using the electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) that is used for the immunisation programme. This cloud-based application tracks real-time stock positioning and supply route based on the information fed by the ground staff. Union health minister Harsh Vardhan only recently announced that the government was looking at procuring and utilizing about 400-500 million vaccine doses, covering about 200-250 million people.
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