Amid concerns over the efficacy of Covishield vaccination for Covid-19, PGIMER Director Dr Jagat Ram on Monday said that there is no adverse effect of the trial of both the doses for Covishield vaccination.
The trial was conducted successfully on 149 volunteers, Dr Jagat Ram said during a meeting convened by Punjab Governor and UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore to review COVID-19 situation in the city.
The PGIMER Director said that the hospital has 63 COVID patients in Nehru Hospital Extension, out of which 20 belonged to Chandigarh, 26 to Punjab, 8 to Haryana, 5 to Himachal Pradesh and remaining to other states.
Notably, India’s drugs regulator DCGI had on Sunday gave final emergency use approval for two COVID-19 vaccines- Covishield and Covaxin. AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s Covishield is being manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII).
Covishield is to be administered in two doses and claims to have an overall efficacy of 62 per cent. The vaccine is believed to have higher efficacy if the two doses are administered three months apart.
During the meeting, it was informed that dry run exercise went on smoothly in the city. The dry run of vaccination has been conducted at three sites in GMSH-16, Civil Hospital, Manimajra and Sector 22 Hospital to check end-to-end testing of CoWin portal.
The UT Administrator was apprized that the staggering of healthcare workers for vaccination needs to be done to ensure better coordinated effort and Government of India has already been requested to make requisite amendment in the portal.
A total of 8,830 healthcare workers including private healthcare providers have been registered in Chandigarh, which are to be administered vaccination in the first phase.
KK Yadav, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation informed that the data of almost 10,500 frontline workers of Municipal Corporation has also been compiled and ready for uploading for vaccination in the second phase. Similarly, data for other frontline workers like Police, Civil Defence, Revenue and Disaster Management is also being compiled.
It was further informed that a total of 12,223 COVID samples have been tested in the last 12 days, out of which 617 have been found positive with 5 percent positivity rate.
One walk-in-refrigerator has been sanctioned by the Government of India for Chandigarh to augment the vaccination effort. Apart from this, post-Covid Care Clinics are successfully operating in GMCH-32 and GMSH-16 and about 20 such patients are being monitored daily.
It was also informed that all 34 samples of United Kingdom returned travellers have been found to be negative for COVID-19.
UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore appealed to all the recovered COVID patients to avail the facility of post-COVID Care Clinic, so that any unexpected health issue can be addressed timely by professionals.