The health department has set up a State control room with representation from various stakeholders, including doctors and development partners such as Unicef, in order to monitor the vaccination programme for Covid-19 across Jharkhand, health officials said on Tuesday.
The control room consists of five teams of around 50 doctors and each team has been assigned a specific task. The control room comprises separate teams for technical assistance, data management, communication and demand generation, cold chain and logistics management and capacity building. Each team has around 10 doctors, said Dr. Ajit Prasad, the second lead in the technical assistance team.
A member of the capacity building team, Dr. LR Pathak said that all the stakeholders will meet every week and plan the future course of action in the vaccination programme. The members of the control room will also identify the various challenges in running the immunization programme in Jharkhand and troubleshoot, added Pathak.
On Tuesday, the National Health Mission (NHM) issued answers to frequently asked questions related to the Covid-19 vaccine in which it stated that a photo identity proof will be a must for any person to get Covid-19 vaccine shots. Voter ID cards, school certificates, MGNREGA job cards, PAN cards and passports are some of the identity proofs that can be used to register for the vaccination. Also, the person getting vaccinated has to produce his photo identity proof even at the vaccination centre, failing which he will not be administered the vaccine shot.
The document further stated that people would have to continue taking precautionary measures against the virus even after getting the vaccine shots. The vaccine, it said, will generate protective levels of antibodies in the body in two weeks after taking the second dose.
For storage of the vaccine, Jharkhand already has 275 Cold Chain Points and has proposed additional 30 Cold Chain Points to enhance the storage capacity in the state, officials from NHM said. Figures shared by a source in the health department highlighted that Jharkhand has five walk in coolers and four more are being procured. The state also has three walk in freezers and two more will be procured soon. Besides, there are 5505 cold boxes and 41,979 vaccine carriers available in Jharkhand.
As per figures with the NHM, the state already has 1666 electrical equipment for running vaccination programmes. These include ILRs and DFs. ILRs, officials said, maintain a temperature between 2 degree Celsius and 8 degree Celsius, while DFs help maintain a temperature below 0 degrees for vaccine storage. Deep freezers are also used for maintaining temperature during transportation of the vaccine.