As the cold chain points across the country are remodelling themselves to support the storage of the upcoming Covid-19 vaccine, the national capital is expected to receive its first batch of vaccines by the end of December, officials of the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, the first vaccine storage facility in Delhi, told IANS.
B.L. Sherwal, medical director of the hospital, said that a separate facility in the hospital has been demarcated to store the vaccine doses which are expected to arrive by the month end.
“The vaccine doses would arrive at the storage units by the end of December. To store them in Delhi, we have demarcated a building on the campus which is currently undergoing refurbishment,” he said.
A three-storey building in the hospital premises, spawn over an area of 5,000 square metres, has been found suitable by the Centre to be used as a vaccine storage facility.
Sherwal informed IANS that the Centre is providing deep refrigerators of different kinds to support the storage temperature of the variety of vaccines which are currently under different stages of clinical trials.
“The Centre would provide us with deep refrigerators with storage capacity ranging from -20 to -70-degree Celsius. Besides, model 228, which are regular refrigerators used to store medical drugs, would also come along,” Sherwal told IANS.
He also said that the refurbishment of the demarcated vaccine storage facility would be completed in the next few days while the deep refrigerators would arrive by mid-December. “Currently, we are remodelling the electrical points and other infrastructure as per the requirements of the deep refrigerators,” Sherwal added.