Coronavirus vaccines likely to reach cold storages in Delhi by December end

New Delhi : The national capital will be receiving the first batch of coronavirus vaccine by the end of December, officials of the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, the first vaccine storage facility in the city said. This comes at a time when the cold storages are making changes to ensure smooth process of storing the vaccine.

Cold chain spaces are designed to keep COVID vaccines at the recommended temperature from the time of its manufacture till it reaches the target beneficiary.

Currently, there are five vaccines which are in the final phases of clinical trials in India. The Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which is testing and manufacturing the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate, has said that it will apply for emergency marketing authorisation of the vaccine in little over a month’s time. The vaccine being manufactured by it can be stored at temperatures between 2 and 8-degree Celsius.

“The vaccine doses would arrive at the storage units by the end of December. To store them in Delhi, we have demarcated a building on the campus which is currently undergoing refurbishment,” said BL Sherwal, medical director of the hospital. The central government has found a three-storey building (spawn over an area of 5,000 square metres) in the hospital premises to be suitable for storage of the vaccine.

“The Centre would provide us with deep refrigerators with storage capacity ranging from -20 to -70-degree Celsius. Besides, model 228, which are regular refrigerators used to store medical drugs, would also come along,” Sherwal told IANS.