In a first of a kind development, the Telangana government has joined hands with a startup from IIT-Hyderabad to reach out to the backward areas to vaccinate the rural villagers. The top engineering institute, on Friday, revealed in a statement that the CM KC Rao government has appointed a start-up developed at IIT- Hyderabad as its on-ground immunization partner.

The statement further added that the collaboration, ‘VaccineonWheels’, is a Public-Private Partnership, and with the help of government and private funds, vaccination facilities will be taken to rural areas. Initially, 50 mobile vaccination clinics will be set up, which will consist of all the facilities. The partnership aims to vaccinate over 1 million marginalized people in the shortest span of time.

The free vaccines against COVID-19 will be administered to the villagers in micro-vaccination booths that will be set up by the collaboration. They also plan to further expand the program in the coming time. The collaboration also seeks funding from private organisations under the CSR initiative.

Professor B Murthy, the institute’s director, congratulated the team, saying, ‘VaccineOnWheels’ is innovative as well as the first-of-its-kind method to vaccinate India’s unreached people. Such innovations are the need of the hour for both COVID-19 and Non-COVID-19 vaccinations.

Telangana COVID-19 Status

Telangana has vaccinated over 2,36,29,352 people so far. The coronavirus curve in the state has settled down after battling the ferocious second wave. The state on Friday recorded 247 new covid cases and one death, taking the total number of active cases to 4,877. The state has so far recorded 6,64,411 cases and 3,909 deaths.

COVID-19 status of India

As India struggles to fight the deadly COVID-19 virus, it reported 31,382 fresh coronavirus cases on Friday, with 32,542 recoveries and 318 deaths in the past 24 hours. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), out of the total infections, the active cases account for 0.89%, the lowest since March 2020. Currently, there are 3,00,162 active cases in the country. Meanwhile, Kerala recorded 19,682 COVID cases and 152 deaths on Thursday, September 23.

To date, 3,28,48,273 patients have recovered from COVID-19 as India’s recovery rate stands at 97.78%. Furthermore, the Health Ministry states that the daily positivity rate stands at 2%, and has been less than 3% for the past 25 days. Also, the weekly positivity rate stands at 2.07%, which has been below 3% for the last 91 days.

India’s COVID vaccination drive

To date, India has administered a total of 84,15,18,026 COVID vaccine doses across 56,082 vaccination sites. Earlier on September 21, the Health Ministry announced that states and union territories have received more than 80.13 crores of COVID-19 vaccine doses and more than 4.52 crore unused doses are still available. In a major milestone achievement, India administered over 2.5 crore vaccine doses against Coronavirus on September 17.