Govt leans on poll data for scaling up vaccine centres

NEW DELHI: The Delhi government will be using booth level poll data for further scaling up of Covid-19 vaccination centres to ensure a proportionate distribution of sites across the city, before the drive is opened to people aged over 50 years, which is likely to happen by mid-march, said senior government officials on Wednesday.

The government estimates suggest that there are 4.24 million people in Delhi who are aged over 50 years.

This is the biggest priority group in terms of numbers and opening up the vaccination drive to them would require a major scaling up of sites. The numbers are being fed into the database from the electoral rolls. Booth level poll data will be used to ensure proportionate distribution of vaccination sites -- areas which have more beneficiaries will get more centres,” said the government official who did not wish to be identified, adding that the government is likely to open up the vaccination drive to the 50+ group by mid-march. Currently, the vaccination drive is open to health workers (240,000 registered beneficiaries) and front-line workers (450,000 beneficiaries) – and 228,290 of them have been vaccinated so far, records show.

The national capital currently has 261 functional Covid-19 vaccination centres of which 228 administer Covishield vaccine -- the Indian variation of the Oxford/astrazeneca vaccine that is manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) – and the others administer Covaxin, which was developed by Bharat Biotech, an Indian firm. On January 16, when the vaccination drive was rolled out across the country, Delhi had started with 81 sites.

A second official, also on condition of anonymity, said the government is likely to further break up the 50+ category into smaller chunks in terms of age and prioritise the most elderly of them.

“Several meetings have discussed this issue but specific directions are awaited from the Centre,” said the official.

The second official further said that once vaccination of people aged over 50 years begins, the government will also be setting help desks where eligible people can get themselves registered on their own – by submitting documents that qualify as proof of residence.

By late-march, the government also plans to start vaccinating people with comorbidities (such as blood pressure and hypertension). They are still ascertaining the number of such people from the findings of the socio-economic survey conducted in 2019, health surveys conducted during the pandemic, hospital data, and records of several government departments, said the second official.

Dr K Srinath Reddy, president , Public Health Foundation of India, said, “Using granular data to scale up vaccination capacity is a good way to ensure maximum coverage with minimum inconvenience.

Also, elderly people are more vulnerable to Covid-19. With age, the probability of having comorbidities is higher and the body’s immune system weakens. It would be a good strategy to further break down the beneficiary group of people aged over 50 years into smaller segments and prioritise the most elderly of them.”

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