Apollo Hospitals ready to administer COVID-19 vaccines to 1 million people per day

Apollo Hospitals said on October 15 that it ws gearing up its network of pharmacies, clinics and hospitals to deliver 1 million COVID-19 vaccines per day.

Apollo has a pan India web of 19 medicine supply hubs with cold chain facilities, 70 hospitals, 400 plus clinics, 500 corporate health centers, 4000 pharmacies alongside its omni-channel digital platform Apollo 24|7 to ensure massive administration capacity of COVID-19 vaccines.

The hospital chain said it is also training 10,000 healthcare workers to be able to administer the Covid-19 vaccine.

The healthcare workers will be given four month training and certification, using Apollo's nursing schools and online education platform.

Apollo said the company has been investing on expanding and strengthening its cold chain and transportation, to facilitate storage and distribution of the vaccine.

Apollo through its sister company Keimed has one of the largest pharmaceutical cold chain and distribution network in India.

"About 30 percent of Indians are 30 mins away from an Apollo facility," said Shobana Kamineni, Executive Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals.

Kamineni said Apollo Hospitals will be working under the aegis of government to deliver the vaccine, but is open to directly purchase and distribute the vaccine.

"If the government allows the private sector to purchase (vaccine), we would be more than willing to buy the vaccine from manufacturers to distribute and administer the vaccine," Kamineni said.

Kamineni said this is not a one shot vaccine, we are looking at a scenario, where vaccines have to be given in multiple time, so private sector involvement will be crucial.

Kamineni said Apollo is also ready to partner with vaccine manufacturers to distribute their vaccine.

Apollo is India's largest private healthcare provider. The hospital chain said it has till date tested over 2,50,000 and have treated over 75,000 patients at its diagnostic labs and hospitals across India.

The government constituted a national expert group on Covid vaccine to guide the government on prioritisation of population groups for immunisation, selection of vaccine candidates, delivery mechanism of the vaccine, cold chain and associated infrastructure for roll-out of vaccination. The government also plans to leverage the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) system to provide real-time information on vaccine stocks and storage temperatures across all cold chain points in the country.

At least nine vaccine candidates have entered late stage clinical trials. Vaccine trials of Bharat Biotech, Zydus Cadila and Serum Institute of India are progressing in India. .India has reported over 7.24 million Covid-19 confirmed cases and 110,586 deaths so far. While there has been a dip in the number of cases being reported per day, the country is still reporting about 60,000 cases daily on average in October.

 

Original Source: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/apollo-hospitals-ready-to-administer-covid-19-vaccines-to-1-million-people-per-day-5966771.html