Dry Run for COVID Vaccine Concludes in AP, Punjab, Gujarat & Assam

Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare conducted a 2-day dry run for Covid-19 vaccination processes.

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Centre’s dry run of the vaccination drive ended successfully on Tuesday, 29 December, in the states of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Gujarat, the Union health ministry said.

The two-day run was conducted in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.

Further, it was aimed at “end-to-end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process and will include planning & preparations as per the Operational Guidelines; creation of facilities & users on Co-WIN application, session site creation & 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, mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state level,” the ministry said in a statement.

It added that the exercise was conducted with the objective of undertaking and confirming “field implementation of IT platform Co-WIN and guide a way forward prior to actual implementation.”

The run was conducted by the District Collector with the aid of a district and block task force, and proved useful for revealing any hold-ups during the actual exercise of inoculation.

The statement also informed that “specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administration,” and “field feedback on the first day of dun run was also reviewed on 29 December through Video conferencing with State & District Programme officers by Joint Secretary (Public Health).”

All partaking states expressed satisfaction regarding the operational approach and the aid of IT platforms to ensure transparency and monitoring of inoculation processes, the statement added.