By Aakanksha Khajuria

New Delhi, Dec 15 (IANS): The mammoth task of training health care workers for the Covid-19 vaccination drive has begun in the national capital, as the country eyes the rollout of the vaccines after they get accelerated approval from the drug regulator.

Around 3,500 health workers have been identified in Delhi to carry out the vaccination process. As per the Delhi government, 1.8 lakh to 2.25 lakh health care workers will be vaccinated in the first phase of the drive, for which 609 cold chain points have been identified in all the top hospitals and Mohalla clinics.

"The training drive started on Monday. Today is the second day of the training. Initially, 3,500 workers will be trained in Delhi," said Dr Suneela Garg of Maulana Azad Medical College, who has been appointed as the public health expert under the coronavirus vaccination programme in Delhi.

"Key people like state immunisation officer and immunisation technical support unit of United Nations Development Programme have already been trained by the Centre and they have begun the state-level training in Delhi," she told IANS.

According to the central government's latest guidelines, health care personnel, including state and district programme managers, medical officers, vaccinator officers, information, education and communication officers, cold chain handlers, supervisors, data managers, ASHA workers, and Mahila Arogya Samitis will be engaged in the vaccination process through cascaded trainings.

The training sessions will be interactive and use methodologies such as PowerPoint presentations, instructive videos, roleplays, exercises and interactive discussions. In the training, they will be apprised about vaccine safety, line-listing of beneficiaries, monitoring, vaccine logistics management and use of digital application Co-WIN.

Dr Garg, who is also the public health advisor to ICMR, further revealed various categories of staff will be deployed at the vaccination site. Vaccinator officers will be responsible for the vaccination of the beneficiaries. It will include MBBS, BDS, AYUSH doctors, pharmacists, nurses, auxiliary midwife and medical interns.

Vaccination officer-1 will be tasked with checking registration status of beneficiaries, while vaccination officer-2 will verify documents. Vaccination officer-3 and 4 will be responsible for crowd management, monitoring of adverse events, and guiding non-registered beneficiaries.

"We have to see that there is no myth and misconception. So, medical officers and nurses will be giving the vaccine, rest of them will be doing other activities. It will be moving in an election mode," she added.

As many as eight Covid-19 vaccine candidates are under different stages of clinical trials which could be ready for authorisation in the near future, including three indigenous vaccines.

At present, three vaccine candidates - Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, Serum Institute-Oxford's Covishield and Pfizer vaccine are in the fray for emergency use authorisation. Last week, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation had asked Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute to submit additional data to get approval.