Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday announced that coronavirus vaccines will be administered at 81 sites in Delhi from January 16 onwards. Around 100 people will get vaccines each day at a site.
In a virtual press conference, Kejriwal said that the vaccines will be given on four days in a week – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday during the initial phase of the immunisation programme.
He continued, “We will begin with 81 centres initially. It will then be increased to 175 in a few days and then to 1,000 centres across Delhi.”
The CM assured the citizens that the government is fully prepared to introduce the vaccination programme from Saturday. More than 8,000 people will be vaccinated every day in the national capital.
As of now, the government has received 2.74 lakh doses of the Covid-19 vaccines from the Centre. It is enough to vaccinate 1.2 lakh health workers. Kejriwal said that more doses of vaccines are expected to arrive in the national capital soon.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kejriwal said that he has appealed to the Centre to provide the coronavirus vaccines free of cost, adding that if the Centre does not provide it free of cost then the Delhi government would provide it free in the national capital.
“I request everyone to not spread misinformation about Covid vaccine. I had appealed to the Central government that COVID vaccination should be provided free of cost to all. If Centre does not do it and a need arises, the vaccine will be provided for free to people of Delhi,” he said.
The first batch of Oxford's Covid-19 vaccine Covishield was sent to Delhi by its manufacturer Serum Institute of India on Tuesday. It reached Delhi's central storage facility at Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital on the same day.
At the hospital, a three-layer security cover has been put in place. 15 new CCTV cameras have been installed to keep a strict vigil on the vaccine storage. The vaccination drive will start from the LNJP Hospital on Saturday in the presence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Health Minister Satyendar Jain.
Meanwhile, Delhi on Wednesday reported 357 new coronavirus cases, taking the cumulative tally to 6,31,249. The number of new cases reported came out of 70,745 tests conducted on the previous day.
11 patients died due to coronavirus in the last 24 hours. The positivity rate was 0.50 per cent and the recovery rate was 97.82 per cent.
