Nation prepares for ‘ world’s biggest vaccination drive’

Starts delivering Covid- 19 vaccines across the country

Indian airlines started delivering batches of COVID- 19 vaccines across the country yesterday, getting ready for the launch of a campaign to offer shots to 1.3 billion people in what officials call the world’s biggest vaccination drive.

Authorities hope to inoculate 300 million high- risk people over the next six to eight months. Vaccinations are scheduled to begin on Saturday.

First to get the vaccine will be 30 million health and other front- line workers, followed by about 270 million people aged over 50 or deemed high- risk.

Top priority

Airlines were due to deliver 5.65 million vaccine doses yesterday to various cities, aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Twitter.

In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, officials said vaccine distribution was their top priority.

“These vaccines will be taken to the cold storage from the airport and swiftly delivered to vaccination booths,” said Nitin Patel, Gujarat’s deputy chief minister.

Modi’s government on Monday signed purchase agreements with Pune- based vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute of India, to buy its Covishield shot, over a week after approving the vaccine developed by Britain’s AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

Rs200 a dose

Serum is supplying some 11 million doses of the shot to the government at Rs200 ($ 2.73, Dh10.30) a dose, a source said.

Health authorities in eastern and western states said they would use the experience from regular child immunisation programmes for polio to ensure everyone gets covered in what they called the world’s biggest vaccination drive.

But shoddy transport networks and a crumbling health care system add an enormous layer of complexity, they said.