The third phase of COVID-19 vaccination for people above 60 years of age and those above 45 years of age with comorbidities will commence on March 1, the Central government announced on Wednesday. The vaccine will be given free of cost at government centres, said Union Minister Prakash Javadekar.
The third phase of vaccination, to be done at 10,000 government and over 20,000 private centres, is likely to cover over 27 crore people. The vaccination of this group will begin early next month and those above the age of 60 will be prioritised. The government has also decided that in the second phase of inoculation, beneficiaries can choose to get their shots in a state different from the one to which they belong according to the electoral roll, senior officials said.
The vaccination drive in India began on 16 January, starting with healthcare workers and then the frontline workers, both estimated to be around 3 crores. Sources said the information given by beneficiaries while self-registering in the next phase, will be checked against data from the electoral roll and Aadhaar.
“There will be two pre-defined groups (in the next phase of the exercise). The government will define which group will get the doses (of vaccine) for free. Beneficiaries will know whether they are eligible for free vaccination while registering,” a top government source said. “Final details on who will get the vaccine for free and who will have to bear the expenses on their own will be shared soon,” the source said.
“We have built two back-end means on Co-win. The beneficiary will download the Co-win app and register; the back-end will fetch the data from two sources: Aadhaar and electoral roll. Only after the data match will it upload any further information. Once it proceeds further, Co-win will display vaccination centres and geo-coordinates. After the beneficiary chooses a site, they will get the option to choose a date,” sources said.
A top government health official confirmed the long-time presence of two mutants – N440K and E484Q – in those two states as well as elsewhere in the country and abroad. Authorities have also found the UK variant in 187 people in India, the South African one in six and one cases of the Brazilian mutation. “There is no reason today for us to believe, on the basis of scientific information, that these are responsible for the upsurge of the outbreak,” Vinod Kumar Paul, who heads a government committee on vaccines, told a news conference.
