Sanitation workers will be among first beneficiaries of COVID-19 vaccination programme set to be launched at 9 a.m. of January 16. Along with nurses, doctors and patient-care providers, sanitation staff too have been in the frontline of COVID-19 management from March 2020, when the pandemic broke out in the State.
At the time when people shied away from coming close to patients with COVID-19, sanitation workers were involved in cleaning and sweeping hospital wards where the patients were admitted. Some of them were meted with harsh treatment because of the work they were involved in.
At least nine women who worked in sanitation wing of Gandhi Hospital were forced to stay on the hospital premises during lockdown as their neighbours in Chengicherla village, Medchal, chased them away from homes. They were asked to choose to either quit work or stay away from home.
The sanitation workers chose to report for duty as they were the sole earning members of family. The women stayed at a shelter home on the hospital’s premises.
Healthcare workers are given the first priority when the COVID-19 vaccination programme will be launched.
Director of Public Health G Srinivasa Rao said that sanitation workers would be among the first beneficiaries.
At govt. hospitals
There is change of the plans about the places where the vaccination will be rolled out from Saturday. Earlier, the programme was scheduled to be rolled out in around 40 private hospitals too. However, officials of the Health department said that the programme would be carried out only at government health centres for a few days. Gradually, in a week or two, it would be rolled out in private hospitals too.
Whenever it was launched at private health centres, Health department staff would administer the vaccine doses.
All empty vials of the vaccines have to be returned. If doses are remaining after opening a vial, it would to be discarded. The information about empty vials, discarded doses, has to be uploaded into Co-WIN.
Officials have prepared a list of the vaccine session sites, the number of beneficiaries, and the number of vials and doses, as per district on the day of the launch.
The beneficiaries might start receiving messages about the vaccine session site, time of vaccination and other details through SMS from Thursday.
Dr Srinivasa Rao said if anyone missed the vaccine on the date they were supposed to, a mop-up round would be conducted.
