New Delhi, Jan 2 (FN Bureau) Delhi government has designated 159 sites in the national capital where the vaccination drive against Covid-19 for children aged between fifeteen and eighteen years will take off exclusively, official sources told UNI. The vaccination sites, where the paediatric Covid-19 immunization will start from Monday onwards, are distributed across all eleven districts of the national capital, according to the list accessed by UNI. A senior official from the health department said all 159 centres including hospitals such as Hindu Rao, Girdhari Lal, Kasturba; 60 MCD, Delhi government, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Cantonment Board schools will exclusively vaccinate the eligible children. “We assume the sites will be enough to handle the footfall of children coming for vaccination.
However, people from satellite towns in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana like Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurugram also come for vaccination here. So we will expand the paediatric vaccination drive to more centres as and when required,” he told UNI. Speaking on the preparedness, the officials informed that ambulances will be deployed at all the vaccination sites and hospitals have been linked to dedicated government hospitals to manage adverse reactions which may occur following the inoculation. “To manage allergic reactions post-vaccination, we have prepared Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) kits which will be distributed to the centres. It includes drugs and injections to immediately suppress the allergic reactions,” the official quoted above said. “For the severe adverse event, ambulances have been deployed which will take the case to the hospital linked with the vaccination centres,” he added. As part of the preparations, the education department has directed the schools to inform the parents to get their children in the 15-18 age group vaccinated as soon as possible.
The department’s directions issued to both government and private schools mentioned that “it was imperative for all government, government-aided, and private unaided school students aged 15 to 18 years to get vaccinated on an immediate basis.” According to the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, 10,14,000 children between the age group of 15 and 18 are eligible for Covid vaccination. The drive to vaccinate this group against the Covid-19 will begin from Monday. The Centre has announced that Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin as the only vaccine that will be administered to eligible recipients in the age group of 15-18 years. The guidelines by the Union Government for Covid vaccination among children state that both walk-in and online registration will be available for vaccination. While the enrollment for the Covid-19 vaccination drive among children began on Co-WIN on Saturday, the onsite registration will commence from the day of vaccination on January 3. Children can also register themselves using their parents’ existing Co-WIN accounts or after creating a new account through a unique mobile number. Vaccination slots can be booked on the Co-WIN portal using the school and government ID cards.