Sharda Hospital become fist COVID-19 vaccination center in Greater Noida. With the intense health and financial trauma inflicted globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the New Year shines a ray of hope as Oxford’s Serum Institute and India’s Bharat Biotech have successfully developed COVID-19 vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, respectively. These two experimental vaccines were put through a dry run in several states of India including Uttar Pradesh. Quite a few renowned healthcare facilities, both government and private, were appointed as vaccination centres for this purpose. In this regard, it is important to note that Sharda Medical College, in Greater Noida, was selected as one of the vaccination centres for the Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh. Find out more by reading about the dry run and its efficacy.
What is a vaccine dry run?
The dry run for the above-mentioned COVID-19 vaccines was a mock drill for the administration of vaccines at a massive scale. For the actual administration of COVID-19 vaccines at such a large scale as that of India, it had become necessary to conduct a dry run. It involved administering dummy vaccines and understanding the potential dangers and shortcomings of the healthcare infrastructure so that the same is not encountered during the actual inoculation drive across the country.
The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare conducted a dry run across all the states and union territories of India that spanned 286 sessions in 125 districts to get an idea of the actual burden of the task. At the Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, Sharda Hospital was selected for such a dry run due to its state-of-the-art healthcare infrastructure.
The actual vaccination drive for COVID-19
The administration of Gautam Budh Nagar district has narrowed down 30 hospitals and healthcare facilities that will become the vaccination sites for the actual inoculation drive. The list of such hospitals includes Sharda Hospital, Yatharth Hospital, Government Institute of Medical Sciences, and Super Speciality Paediatric Hospital & Post Graduate Teaching Institute, among many others. The actual vaccination drive also includes feeding relevant data into the online portal, named Co-WIN, so that the delivery of vaccinations can be monitored uniformly.
Why Sharda Hospital was chosen?
Out of all the healthcare facilities and hospitals that have been chosen for vaccine delivery in Gautam Budh Nagar, the district administration has allotted a total of 12 vaccination booths to Sharda Hospital for its large expandable campus size and modern healthcare facilities. Moreover, Sharda Hospital has a total of 2,450 trained and fully equipped healthcare workers. Sharda University has also decided to dedicate 5 blocks of the 63-acre campus for vaccination purposes. With such a vast resource of manpower and technological infrastructure, Sharda Hospital has been chosen aptly as a COVID-19 vaccination center.
