Delivery of Covid vaccine

The government recently said it will procure the vaccine and distribute it under a special COVID-19 immunisation programme to four categories of people, free-of-charge.
The priority groups named are healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses and ASHA workers, a second category that includes frontline workers including police and armed forces.
The third category of those aged above 50 . The fourth category will be those below 50 years of age with co-morbidities.

A bigger challenge comes in the form of keeping the vaccines at ultralow temperatures during distribution.
Most of the COVID-19 vaccines, the RNA vaccines in particular, that are in the advanced stage of Phase-3 trials require –70 degrees Celsius to –80 degree Celsius cold-chain.
In India we do not have this kind of storage requirement and building the infrastructure for ultracold storage requires considerable resources, because we need not just the freezers, but also uninterrupted power supply.
Hence, the decision to use a COVID-19 vaccine will need to take into consideration logistics and infrastructure needed to distribute and deliver vaccines, which goes beyond financial resources to purchase vaccines.
The next biggest challenge might be in vaccinating people with two doses four weeks apart during the pandemic. Most of the vaccines at advanced stages of Phase-3 trial use two doses of the vaccine to achieve best results.

Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is a vaccination program launched by the Government of India in 1985.
It became a part of Child Survival and Safe Motherhood Programme in 1992 and is currently one of the key areas under National Rural Health Mission since 2005.
Under UIP, immunization is providing free of cost against 12 vaccine preventable diseases:
- Nationally against 9 diseases – Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Polio, Measles, Rubella, severe form of Childhood Tuberculosis, Hepatitis B and Meningitis & Pneumonia caused by Hemophilus Influenza type B
- Sub-nationally against 3 diseases – Rotavirus diarrhoea, Pneumococcal Pneumonia and Japanese Encephalitis (JE); of which Rotavirus vaccine and Pneumococcal Conjugate vaccine are in process of expansion while JE vaccine is provided only in endemic districts.

The aim is to fully immunize more than 89 lakh children who are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated under UIP.
It targets children under 2 years of age and pregnant women for immunization.
The Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) was launched by the Government of India in 2017 to reach each and every child under two years of age and all those pregnant women who have been left uncovered under the routine immunisation programme.
To boost the routine immunization coverage in the country, Government of India has introduced Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 to ensure reaching the unreached with all available vaccines and accelerate the coverage of children and pregnant women in the identified districts and blocks.

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