Vaccination drive at IITK – In conversation with Dr. Mamta Vyas

On 22nd January, the first shot of the Covid vaccine was delivered to the health workers of our Institute. Of course, we all got excited and decided to bring to you what’s been happening under the hood and how this came to be. We had a talk with the Head of HC, Dr. Mamta Vyas, to find out all about this great news. Here’s everything we got to know.

How did all this work? What were the roles of the administration and the government in this drive?

So, the government has planned to carry out the vaccination drive in multiple phases. The first phase includes immunizing all the health care workers who are at the greatest risk. Phase 2 includes all the other frontline workers such as police personnel, army personnel, and sanitation workers. After that, we have phase 3 that includes the people over 50 years old and all the other people with comorbidity(multiple diseases) such as those suffering from hypertension and diabetes.

We, the HC and IITK administration have been very proactive to get this done smoothly. HC had prepared the list of health workers to be vaccinated and got almost all of them vaccinated. Of the 92 workers on that list, 90 have been vaccinated, and only 2 are left, both of whom have certain medical issues. HC workers will receive the second dose of vaccines on 19th February which will complete their immunization.

How did the Health Centre organize this drive?

Initially, HC was not one of the designated vaccination centres designated by the government. But considering the number of health care workers involved, we asked the COVID Vaccination Officer of Kanpur to carry out the vaccination drive in HC itself. Upon our insistence, the CMO of Kanpur, DM of Kanpur, and the COVIDVaccination Team of the district declared HC as a COVIDVaccination Centre. Finally, on 22nd January, our Director, the DM, and the CMO of Kanpur inaugurated this drive.

The government has provided guidelines to be followed at any vaccinating centre, like having a waiting area with social distancing norms, a vaccination chamber, an observation area, and an AEFI (Adverse effect following immunization) room. AEFI room is like an emergency room ready to deal with cases of potential side effects after vaccination. All of these guidelines were followed at HC. Chairs were put up in the pharmacy lounge, and that area was used as the observation zone. The emergency room (room #7) was used as the AEFI room. The Vaccination team authorized by the government was present throughout the process which consisted of 14 people and a few police personnel. People from this team alone were allowed to carry out the vaccination and they were very efficient in their roles.

Which vaccine was used and were there any side effects?

Two vaccines are currently authorized by the government – Covaxin, and Covishield. HC workers were vaccinated with Covishield. The government provided the vaccine and we did not really have a choice among the two. Two doses of the vaccine are required to complete the immunization, with the second dose being 28 days after the first one. After 14-28 days of the second dose, antibodies develop in the body. Even after being vaccinated, people should continue exercising caution and use masks, wash hands frequently, and follow social distancing norms.

At HC, the vaccinated people were given a rest for 30 mins during which they were kept under observation by the AEFI and vaccinating teams. Fortunately, no one suffered from any significant side effects. OPD services were closed for that day while emergency services remained active. Few of us faced some mild body aches, mild fever, and some pain at the injection spot, after several hours. All the health workers were back to their normal duties the very next day.

What are the future plans regarding vaccination?

For the second and third phases, we are requesting the authorities to let HC be a vaccination center to help vaccinate the campus residents.

Vaccination for everyone is yet to be announced. Anyone should be able to get themselves vaccinated in the later phases. Once vaccination for everyone is announced, the institute will plan it through HC.

Any message you would like to share with the readers?

We strongly urge people to keep faith in our scientists and the vaccines being made. We also request every health worker out there to come forward and get vaccinated. I, myself have received my first shot along with my co-workers and would urge people to come forward for vaccination on their turn. We are happy that we did not face any issue in getting our health workers vaccinated, unlike other centres, where several medical workers were hesitant and some even had to be chased down to get vaccinated! Our 90 health workers were vaccinated only in about two and a half hours with no such complications.

We believe that the entire community must look forward to vaccination so that we can get back to normalcy as soon as possible. The Health Centre has been functioning continuously throughout the pandemic despite all the odds. As a doctor, it’s a real struggle to treat patients, with all these restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Quite a few of our employees did get infected by COVID, which caused considerable anxiety and fear initially, but they duly recovered and got back to their duties. Becoming immunized has given us a lot of confidence going forward and would help the community in quickly getting back to normalcy.