Belagavi: The district health and family welfare department officials have set up a storage facility centre for the vaccine of COVID19 in Belagavi. A facility centre equipped with walk-in cooler, walk-in freezer and other infrastructure has been prepared at the centre. The vaccine shots stored in Belagavi will be supplied to eight districts including Vijaypura, Bagalkote, Dharwad, Haveri and Koppal, Uttara Kannada, Haveri and Gadag of North Karnataka.
According to the district health official, the boxes of COVID19 vaccines will be shipped to Belagavi from Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai. Then the vaccine will be supplied to the districts of north Karnataka as per the requirement. The officials have kept ready about 180 deep freezers and Ice Line Refrigerator(ILR) to store the vaccine shots. These requirements will be made available at the Taluk hospitals and community health centres in the district.
The main storage of the vaccine will be at District Health officers office and then will be distributed to all hospitals. Apart from this, a total of 180 cold chain points will be set up for the distribution to people. It is said that the temperature of the room where the vaccine is stored has to be maintained at 2 to 8 degree Celsius. The vaccine shots will be stored in the ILR.
In the first phase, the shots of the vaccine will be given to the 28,195 health workers of the health department which include doctors, nurses at 195 government hospitals and 1521 private hospitals of the Belagavi district. In the second phase, 2.5 lakh people including Police, Asha workers, Sanitation workers, Teachers will be vaccinated. In the third phase, all the senior citizens aged above 50 years will be given priority.
The officials are expecting that the supply of the vaccine for the first phase vaccination will be made on January 15. The department has to vaccinate a total of 53 Lakh people in Belagavi district.
District Health officer Dr Shashikant Munyal said ‘There will special walk-in freeze boxes to transport the vaccine shots and special vehicle will be arranged for the transportation. The distribution will be started without delay once the vaccine is shipped to us’ he said.