Dehradun, December 15: Uttarakhand Health Secretary Amit Negi on Tuesday announced that over 93,000 health workers in the hill state will be given COVID-19 vaccine free of cost. The vaccination will start as soon as vaccines are made available by the Centre. According to reports, the largest store in the state is being built in Dehradun which will have the capacity to carry millions of vaccines.  "All preparations for vaccination are going on a war footing, as soon as the state gets vaccines from the centre, the vaccination process will be started in the state. In the first phase, health workers will be given the vaccination. Preparations for cold chain, man power, vaccination booth etc. are going smoothly", Negi said.

Earlier in the day, the Central government had released detailed guidelines for the mass COVID-19 vaccination drive across the country. The drive will commence once the vaccines get emergency use approval form the drug regulator. In the phase 1, the Health Ministry had marked thirty crore Indian population, one of the large-scale immunisation of COVID-19 vaccine.

The phase one includes one crore healthcare workers, two crore frontline workers and 27 crore general population falling in priority groups set by the expert group. The guidelines by the Centre include vaccinating 100-200 people during each session per day to monitoring them for 30 minutes for any adverse event, using COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network to track beneficiaries. India’s COVID-19 Tally Crosses 99-Lakh Mark With 22,065 New Cases in Past 24 Hours, Death Toll Rises to 1,43,709.

In Uttarakhand, the COVID-19 tally rose to 83,006 on Monday with 577 more people testing positive. With six more COVID-19 fatalities, the death toll in the state rose to 1,361. Dehradun district reported the highest number of 164 cases followed by Nainital, Pauri, Champawat, Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar among others.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 15, 2020 11:05 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).