A Solution to solve Mumbai's Vaccination Problem - an open letter to CM of Maharashtra
Hope you are doing well.....
The whole country is in deep COVID crisis. In Maharashtra too, the cases are rising. If we don't prevent this sooner, we will be in deep shortage of medical supplies and this can give rise to a big health emergency.
The only way in which we can prevent this is by Mass Vaccination of everyone in Mumbai and Maharashtra. Vaccination prevents infection of COVID and hospitalization in all age categories to a great extent. Countries like Israel and UK are a great example. As centre has not allowed Maharashtra to allow door to door vaccination, I have another idea of undertaking mass vaccination in Mumbai (can be expanded to all of Maharashtra too). After 1st May when vaccination will be opened for all adults, this will help reduce the burden on the current vaccination centres
The idea-
There are a lot of grounds and parks in every locality of Mumbai. They are now idle because of the current mini lockdown. There are many nurses and attendants too in every society /locality who can give the vaccine to people. We can setup small camps in every locality of Mumbai (25 in each ward) and give vaccines to people. This will be similar to the concept of blood donation camps and other health check up camps being regularly setup in our areas. Using this method, we can give vaccines to at least 250 people in a single day at each centre. As there are 24 wards in Mumbai, we can give the vaccine to 1.5 Lakh people per day in addition to the current network. That translates to 4.5 CR people in a month's time.
For the administration part at these vaccination camps we can take help of 20 to 30 year olds like me who are good with using Technology. College students and NGOs can be also used.
There will be many youngsters who will be interesting in working for this and help steer this crisis.
Hope you all find it useful and will be glad if this can be implemented......
Comments
1. Perishable nature of vaccine
2. Unorganised demand
3. Limited supply
4. Improper localisation Of vulnerable areas of Covid cases
The vaccines that come in a packed carton, upon opening of carton, needs to be used within the same day.
Now if you have huge que at doors of vaccination center, then this vaccine does not get wasted.. but if people do not come, they are simple thrown away..so literacy and sense of urgency is important..
Secondly, vaccination drive currently identifies personnel on basis of their age.. which is good.. but can be optimised.. for eg. If there are 5000 homes in a particular area divided into clusters of say 500 homes each then the cluster in which there is least no. of active or historical covid cases are most vulnerable to fresh outbreak.. so compulsory vaccination of each member of such cluster could reduce the domino effect as they shall improve the herd immunity.. similarly identification of market places and vaccinating their pupils upfront is another way to get things done quickly..
All in all.. just like Census.. the vaccine needs to reach the individual rather than other way around..