It will take about two months to vaccinate the public, after vaccinating healthcare workers in the first round, said Health & Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar.
Speaking to reporters after inspecting a vaccine storage facility in Bengaluru, he said that experts’ opinion will be sought to decide whether every person should be vaccinated or not.
The Minister said that State was well prepared to store vaccines with two walk-in coolers with a capacity of 45 lakh doses each in Bengaluru and one more expected to be provided by the Centre. “Apart from this, we have five regional storage centres at Chitradurga, Kalburgi, Dakshina Kannada, Mysuru and Bagalkot. We also have a corporation storage facility in every district, while BBMP has 50 blocks. Totally, we have 2,767 cold chain points,” he said.
Explaining the distribution network, Dr. Sudhakar said vaccine will be sent to regional storage centres through 900 vaccine carriers. It will be further distributed to district centres from there. “About 24 lakh syringes have arrived and we are getting 13.9 lakh dosages of vaccines in the first phase. The State is fully prepared to distribute the vaccine,” he added.
“We have close to 900 vehicles logistically to support us in the transportation of vials. More or less we are geared up and are quite well-prepared to handle the vaccine programme in Karnataka,” he said. Asked if healthcare workers were ready to be vaccinated, Dr. Sudhakar said, “They are all eager to receive their vaccine because they all know that it is a very safe vaccine. Humongous effort and tireless work of scientists and doctors have gone into it in the last 10 months. They have taken every factor into consideration and they have come out with a vaccine. There have been primary, secondary and tertiary trials. Our regulatory bodies have allowed this to take place. We should believe in the system.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be interacting with the Chief Ministers of all the State through video conference on Monday.
