By Ashish Srivastava

New Delhi, Jan 13 (IANS): The Delhi government has reduced the number of vaccination sites approved for the launch of Covid immunisation programme to 75 from the 89 shortlisted earlier.

A total of 12 private and two government hospitals have been removed from the final list.

The sources told IANS that the reduction followed the day-long inspection by officials of the shortlisted institutions. The inspection report was later discussed in a virtual conference held in the evening among District Magistrates and officials of the Directorate of Health and Family Welfare.

"Fourteen sites, which did not make up to the final list, were found to have less prepared aspects of handling the load and adverse reaction following immunisation as well," a top Delhi government officials said.

Earlier, sources informed IANS that the launch day session sites for the whole country have been reduced from 5,000 to 2,934.

The national capital has received 2.84 Covid vaccines in two days. On Tuesday, it received 2.64 lakh doses of Covishield, the Covid vaccine manufactured by the Serum institute of India. On Wednesday, a consignment carrying 20,000 doses of Covaxin, the Covid vaccine of Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical firm Bharat Biotech, was delivered to the city's vaccine storage facility, in the morning.

All the vaccines are stored at Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital (RGSSH), which is also doubling up as Delhi's only vaccine storage facility.

The roll-out of vaccines will provide priority to the healthcare workers and frontline workers who are estimated to be around three crore, followed by those above 50 years of age and the under-50 population groups with co-morbidities numbering around 27 crore.