It is really commendable to have achieved an average of above 65 L Covid Vaccination over last one week. We have vaccinated about 32 Crore people, some of these having taken the first shot and some having taken the second shot. However, we have a lot of ground to cover still. I propose following measures to accelerate the drive to cross 1 crore shots per day to complete remaining 90 crore plus population with both shots:
Involve Corporates to cover others too, besides their employees and their families, business partners, Contractors - Sub Contractors, common citizens around their factories in different locations etc with their families above the age of 18. Motivate them to use Mobile Vans to conduct Vaccination Camps in near by villages. Give them the benefits and consider the expenses borne under the drive under CSR ( Corporate Social Responsibility ).
Government should Engage NGOs in health care field , engage Mobile vans and hand these over to them to cover interiors, villages etc.
Engage Junior Colleges / Large Educational Institutions in this drive. They should ask students to bring their parents and neighbors and their families who have not taken the shots.
Engage District / Jillah level schools to organize similar camps in their localities.
Government should supply them vaccines. The State Governments should be asked to engage retired Doctors & Nurses, Pvt Doctors, MBBS interns, and Nursing staff to all who need such help and coordinate all these activities.
The basic idea is to reach maximum numbers in shortest possible time. The effort should be to reach the citizen in his locality / house.
Government should also ask large PSUs, Railways, Airlines, Roadways, Military and Paramilitary Staffs to take up the vaccination drive. If they can be utilized in times of emergencies like floods / earthquakes etc, why not in vaccination drive too. This too is an emergency.
The online registration process too needs improvement. There should be a provision for registering the applicant's name only once. He / She should not be required to log in every day to check availability. The system should allocate the hospital / center near the residence, based on the inputs provided by the applicant. He / She should get a system generated message.
The Last point I would like to mention is about ramping up vaccine manufacturing units & capacities. It is good to know that few more suppliers like Biological E Ltd, Zydus Cadilla etc will start suppying vaccines very soon. Bharat Biotec is in the process of augmenting capacity, but Government should assess the supply and demand situation in coming months and take adequate steps to import vaccines in time, if required.
