New Delhi (NVI): The government successfully conducted the two-day dry run for the COVID-19 vaccination in four states of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat, Union Ministry of Health said today.
The two-day end-to-end dry run from December 28 to 29 was undertaken in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.
In an official statement, the Ministry of Health said, “The field feedback on the first day of drn run was reviewed on December 29 through video conferencing with State and District Programme Officers by Joint Secretary.”
“All states expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and use of IT platform to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes expected to cover a large number of people across the country,” it added.
Additional suggestions on IT platform were also noted for further enhancement of Co-WIN platform.
The dry run exercise was aimed at testing of vaccination process and included planning and preparations, creation of facilities and users on Co-WIN application, session site creation and mapping of sites, Health Care Workers (HCW) data upload, receipt of vaccines and vaccine allocation by the district, session planning, deployment of vaccination team, logistics mobilization at session site and mock drill of conducting vaccination, the statement noted.
The ministry also informed that, the District Collector with engagement of district and block task force were made responsible for conducting the dry run.
Also, specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administration and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary’s data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators and beneficiaries were carried out.
“Backed with the experience of rolling out Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) and conducting nationwide multiple wide-range injectable vaccination campaigns such as measles-rubella (MR) and adult Japanese Encephalitis (JE) campaign, required steps are being undertaken to vaccinate priority population groups such as health care workers, frontline workers and people above 50 years for Covid-19,” the statement said.
Furthermore, the ministry hopes that detailed insights and feedback obtained from the process will help enrich the operational guidelines and IT platform and will strengthen the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out plan, it added.
-RJV
