COVID-19: Uttarakhand receives 1,13,000 doses of Covishield vaccine

Ahead of the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination drive from January 16, the first batch of 1,13,000 doses of Covishield vaccine from Serum Institute of India (SII) arrived at Dehradun airport on Wednesday.

The Dehradun Airport Director, DK Gautam in a statement said that the vaccine containing 1,13, 000 doses were received by Dr. K S Martolia, Assistant Director, National Health Mission, Uttarakhand.

Later in the day, while addressing a press conference here, Amit Negi, Health Secretary of Uttarakhand said that the first batch of 1,13,000 doses of Covishield vaccine reached at Dehradun airport at 2:45 pm.

"The vaccine has been brought from the airport under the prescribed cold chain system to the state's central dispensary at Dehradun, where it is stored under prescribed norms. The distribution of the vaccine from the central dispensary will be done to all the district and regional vaccine storage points as per the prescribed amount by today and the vaccine will reach the vaccine storage points of all the districts by tomorrow morning, the vaccine will reach the remote districts of the state by tomorrow afternoon," he said.

The health official said that of the 1,13,000 doses of vaccine received by Uttarakhand, 1,640 doses are being made available to health care workers of central health units, 3,450 armed force medical services and 1,07,530 doses to health care workers of state government and private health services. Thus, 1,12,620 vaccine doses will be distributed today, he said.

Covishield and Covaxin, the two COVID-19 vaccines, which have received Emergency Use Authorisation (EAU), have been tested on thousands of people and side-effects are negligible, Dr VK Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, said on Tuesday and noted that the two "are safest of the vaccines".

The first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination drive is scheduled to start from January 16 onwards.

Earlier, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan had said the central government is having close collaboration with states and Union Territories for vaccine roll-out. "All preparations are on track for vaccine roll-out from January 16," he had said.

( With inputs from ANI )