New Delhi: Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare successfully conducted the two-day dry run for the activities involving COVID-19 vaccination in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat on December 28 and 29.
Backed with the experience of Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) and nationwide multiple injectable vaccination campaigns, the ministry is taking various steps for the COVID-19 vaccination among priority groups such as health care workers, frontline workers and people above 50 years.
The dry run aims at end-to-end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process and will include planning and preparations as per the operational guidelines, according to a release of the ministry.
The exercise involved 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 mobilisation at session site, mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state level.
District collectors, who were asked to engage district and block task force, were made responsible for conducting the dry run and it was expected to provide insights on any gaps or bottle-necks during actual conduct of vaccination.
The two-day end-to-end dry run 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.
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, and beneficiary mobilisation were carried out.
Field feedback on the first day of dry run was reviewed on Dec 29 through video-conferencing with state and district programme officers by Joint Secretary (Public Health). All states expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and use of IT platform to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes.
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