Various vaccine candidates have now entered the phase-3 trials against Covid-19, following which the Central government has begun making logical strategies for their acquisition, storage, and distribution. Several storage facilities have been selected by the government for cold storage as most of the vaccines have a specific temperature required to remain effective.

Subgroups under the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19 have been assigned with the responsibility of supervising cold chain facilities for vaccine storage, development, and storage which is headed by the Chairman Dr. VK Paul,  and Niti Aayog.

As per a statement by the Union Health Secretary, Rajesh Bhushan, the subgroups responsible for this task have already been mapped and they have selected government and public facilities for vaccine storage and development. At present, most of them are working on certain modifications to be carried out, suitable for cold storage of the vaccine.

Harsh Vardhan, the Union Health Minister said that the government is presently focusing upon the acquisition of approximately 500 million vaccines, for a population of almost 250 million.

An interesting update on the Covid-19 vaccine is the real-time monitoring of vaccine storage and development from acquisition to distribution. In this process all steps are being closely tracked using the electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN). This is a cloud-based system that functions on the information fed by the ground workers, monitoring real-time stocking, storage, and passage of vaccines from different routes.

On average, 27,000 storage facilities are present all over India in approximately 700 districts which are connected via eVIN for real-time tracking. These facilities have been incorporated with almost 40,000 workers on the frontline and 50,000 temperature loggers to monitor the temperature variations within the storage facility.

VK Paul said that they are ready with a“well-oiled machinery” for vaccine distribution and delivery along with a strong national immunization program which is already in transit. He further added that there are also other vaccines that require cold storage such as the polio and measles vaccine, so it will not be a problem as they have already managed to do so previously. He assured that the government has sufficient financial resources for the vaccine development program.

Former head and advisor of the pharmacology department and the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Dr. YK Gupta believes that India is capable of handling the logistics as they already have an enormous Universal Immunization Program running perfectly, which can be utilized for vaccine delivery system too. He added that a lot of logistical arrangements are currently being made in a well-coordinated manner that should see us through.

Although the procurement, storage, distribution, and delivery systems for the Covid-19 vaccine have been decided, a price based on them has not been fixed yet. Bhushan said that since the vaccines have not been tested yet for their safety and efficacy, it is hard to put a price on a single-dose or a double-dose vaccine whatsoever. Once they have been declared safe and effective, a fixed price can be assigned to the vaccines which will be lower than what was initially decided. Till then, there is no point in fixing a definite price on the vaccine doses.

The author is a student member of the Amity Centre of Happiness.