Second COVID-19 vaccination dry run pan India today

In an attempt to arm the frontline workers with all the equipment that is required to vaccinate a person, the whole of India will see the second dry run of COVID-19 vaccination on Friday. The dry run will be conducted in all districts across states and Union Territories, except Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The dry run is aimed at ensuring efficient planning and management of the immunisation process. 

Each district will identify three types of session sites, similar to the previous dry run conducted on January 2, including a public health facility (district hospital/medical college), private health facility, and rural or urban outreach sites, the Union health ministry said on Wednesday.

“The vaccine dry run will be conducted on January 8 in all districts across India, except for UP and Haryana. COVID-19 vaccine dry run has already been conducted in all districts in UP on January 5 and Haryana is conducting it in all its districts tomorrow (Thursday),” an official had said.

The country’s drugs regulator on Sunday approved Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield and the indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech for restricted emergency use in the country.

The entire planning of the vaccination drive including beneficiary registration, microplanning and vaccination at the planned session site will be tested under the leadership of District Collector or District Magistrate during the dry run.

The dry run will also familiarise the state, district, block and hospital-level officers on all aspects of the COVID vaccine roll out.

The Union health ministry will be in constant touch with the states and UTs throughout the day to seek feedback, provide support and ensure timely resolution of the identified challenges before the actual vaccination roll-out.

The cold chain infrastructure (like walk-in-freezers, walk-in-coolers, ice-lined refrigerators, deep freezers) along with sufficient supplies of syringes and other logistics have been ensured to begin the COVID-19 vaccination drive.

Around 1.7 lakh vaccinators and 3 lakh vaccination team members have been trained on the process to be followed at the vaccination sites which include beneficiary verification, vaccination, cold chain and logistics management, bio-medical waste management, AEFI management and reporting on Co-WIN software.

In a massive nation-wide exercise on January 2, an end-to-end mock drill on COVID-19 vaccine administration was conducted in all states and UTs at 286 session sites spread across 125 districts. More than 75 lakh beneficiaries have been registered till date on the Co-WIN software, the ministry had said earlier.

The entire operational planning and IT platform has been field-tested in four states — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Punjab and Gujarat — on December 28 and 29 and on the basis of the feedback received minor enhancements have been made in the IT system, it had said.