'When every moment counted', tweets minister Hardeep Puri as Covid-19 vaccine drive set in motion
In the vaccination drive scheduled to begin on January 16, the healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated in the first phase.
Union civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday tweeted about the fist day of Covid-19 vaccine delivery, highlighting how quickly the vaccine was delivered.
"When every moment counted, temperature-sensitive boxes carrying the vaccines handed over to consignee within 7 minutes of arrival of aircraft at the parking bay at @aaivjaairport & within 8 minutes at @DelhiAirport," he tweeted.
He also added a Sanskrit prayer in his tweet which means "May all be free from illness or disease".
A massive pan-India inoculation drive against Covid-19 was set in process on Tuesday with more than 56 lakh doses of the Covishield vaccine flown to 13 cities across India from Pune and taken to designated national and state-level stores amid tight security.
In the vaccination drive scheduled to begin on January 16, the healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated in the first phase. The Centre said on Tuesday that all the vaccine vials - 1.1 crore of Covishield from the Serum Institute of India and 55 lakh of Covaxin from Bharat Biotech - will be received by January 14.
Announcing the start of the vaccine movement earlier in the day, Puri had said on Twitter that four airlines were operating nine flights to transport the doses of the vaccine from Pune to Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh.
Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that there are four central government medical store depots in Chennai, Karnal, Kolkata and Mumbai where the Covishield vaccine is being received.
Besides this, all states have at least one regional vaccine store.
Another vaccine consignment on three trucks left SII for Mumbai on Tuesday evening and will be sent from there to 27 places across the country on Wednesday.
