Delhi government draws up list of 189 vaccination centres

NEW DELHI: Delhi government has drawn up a tentative list to scale up the number of vaccination centres to 189 from the 81 in the current first phase of the campaign. The number of locations of these will go up to 144, implying that many will have multiple vaccination booths.
“A list of 189 vaccination centres in 144 hospitals, dispensaries and other healthcare facilities have been finalised for the initial scaling-up phase.The list has been submitted to the central government and the final list of centres will be notified by the central government,” a Delhi government official said on Friday.

At present, vaccination is being carried out from 81 hospitals, both government-run and private. They mostly have one booth each, but now many hospitals would have more than one vaccination booth. District authorities have already finalised plans for scaling up the inoculation programme, which would eventually see 1,000 vaccination centres across the city.
“There are two aspects that need attention for this,” said Arun Kumar Mishra, district magistrate (East). “The first is availability of infrastructure. Of course, this is already in place in the shape of cold chains, fridges, vaccinators, etc. The second aspect is the human one, which means ensuring that people come voluntarily to get vaccinated. In our district, the plan is get all our doctors vaccinated, particularly those in charge of dispensaries. Photographs of the heads of departments and doctors in-charge has been displayed prominently at the centres, so that whoever comes to the centre, can see that the head of the clinic has taken the vaccine.”
An official of the South district administration said inter-hospital counselling session groups have been formed as part of the scaling-up exercise. “Teams of two to three healthcare professionals from major hospitals will go to the smaller centres at dispensaries and clinics from next week to counsel healthcare workers there,” the official said.
Out of the 189 proposed vaccination centres, 74 are in 45 government-run hospitals, ranging from major super specialty hospitals to secondary hospitals, apart from Delhi government’s six maternity & child welfare centres, two dispensaries and one polyclinic. The number of vaccination centres in private healthcare facilities is higher than in government-run facilities, with 106 identified at 90 medical care facilities, including major multi-speciality hospitals, nursing homes, eye care centres and diagnostic centres.
While many hospitals and clinics have two vaccination booths, five booths have been tentatively identified at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in South district, highest for a vaccination centre in Delhi. Other major hospitals with multiple booths include Delhi government’s Lok Nayak Hospital, Burari Hospital and Jag Pravesh Chandra Hospital and the private Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, all with four booths each. Hospitals where three booths are proposed are AIIMS, BL Kapoor Memorial Hospital, Max Hospital, Saket, Okhla ESI Hospital and Ambedkar Nagar Hospital.
According to sources in Delhi government, the number of centres in each district has been chosen keeping in mind the number of healthcare workers registered in each particular district. That is why Central district, which has the highest number of tentative sites (30), also has the highest number of registered healthcare workers at 34,653. It is followed by the West and South districts, with 24 vaccination centres each and the South-East district, which has 20.