The Center’s decision will effectively allow the inclusion of some of the largest private hospital chains and independent medical facilities. This means that hospitals like Fortis and Max, which are not part of the vaccination campaign in Gurgaon (although they are in Delhi), can be part of the effort as long as they are willing and meet certain criteria. Aside from the big names, many smaller private hospitals could also join the Co-win portal used to register and schedule shots.
In Delhi, all major private hospitals are vaccinating eligible beneficiaries. “Initially, only about 54 private hospitals were named. However, the state government updated the list within a few hours to include 136 private hospitals so that the maximum number of people is covered,” said an official. Apollo, Max, Fortis and most of the other major hospital chains in Delhi are offering the vaccine, while there are 56 government-run hospitals where it is available for free.
The rhythm of vaccines It improved with injection scheduling and more than six lakhs of vaccines were administered as of 7pm Tuesday, of which 5.21 lakh recipients received the first dose. Some 88,744 first-line and healthcare workers received the second dose. The better functioning of the portal and the hospitals helped streamline their procedures, despite the fact that the sessions were canceled due to data problems. In some cases, hospitals said vaccine supplies had not arrived and that staff needed a few more days of training.
The Center said 60 vaccine distribution points had been organized nationwide from where more were distributed. He said there were no glitches in the Co-Win software, but there was confusion as people were looking for an application. However, officials said the system is being improved and spaces such as “morning” and “afternoon” will be removed at shorter intervals to ensure there are no crowds. They also said that the 9 a.m. M. At 5 p. M. Will relax if a hospital is able to administer injections late into the night.
Many private hospitals also faced logistical problems, untrained staff, overcrowding, and even a shortage of supplies, leading to delays in vaccination. Currently, vaccines are administered in about 27,000 hospitals, of which about 12,000 are in the private sector.
The decision was made at a high-level meeting in the wake of reports of overcrowding in paneled hospitals and unavailability of appointments or sessions despite people signing up for Co-Win. Almost 50 lakh people, using the Co-Win portal and Aarogya Setu app, had signed up for the Covid vaccination as of Tuesday afternoon. Officials said that assuming two people per mobile phone number, it would be around one million people.
“There were some bugs in the first version of the software that we released on January 16, but there were none yesterday. Just that people were looking for an app and found one that looked authentic but wasn’t made for that purpose.” said RS Sharma, head of the empowered group on Covid-19 vaccines.
To expand coverage, the Center has also recommended that states make optimal use of the capacities of private hospitals and ensure adequate vaccine allocation to all hospitals (government and private) for the entire duration for which they have been planned. the sessions.
“It was reiterated that there is no shortage of vaccines, therefore appropriate doses should be assigned to vaccination centers. States / UTs should not store, reserve, conserve or create a reserve reserve of Covid vaccines at the state and district level. The central government has an adequate stock and will provide the required doses of vaccine to the states and UT, ”said the Ministry of Health.
Emphasizing that there are no software-related glitches in Co-Win, Sharma said that a system has been put in place to monitor user experience, as well as to look for glitches.
“We are looking at how long it takes for a person to register after logging in. We had also done this at the time of Aadhaar. The anecdotes are in one place, but we are making decisions based on data,” he said.
He added that the new version of Co-Win has a “demand-driven approach.” “We do not see any problems in the expansion. It should be able to support a large amount of load … The number of transactions will be large. We also want the data to be safe and secure,” said Sharma.
In all, 1.54 crore doses of the vaccine have so far been administered since the launch of the world’s largest vaccination campaign on January 16. While the second phase of the campaign was launched on March 1, extending coverage to a larger “priority” population group According to age and comorbidities that can increase the risk of serious infection and death, more than 4.3 One thousand rupees for people aged 60 and over and 60,020 people aged 45 and over with specific comorbidities received the vaccine until 7pm Tuesday.
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