Nationwide dry run for Covid-19 vaccination to be conducted today

A nationwide dry run for Covid-19 vaccination will be conducted today. Dry run is essentially a practice session where a sample number of beneficiaries will go through a mock immunisation process. The exercise is aimed at testing the preparedness for the vaccine rollout. Today's dry run will be conducted across all States and Union Territories. Each State and Union Territory has been asked to conduct the dry run at minimum three session sites.

Apart from the staff of the designated vaccination centres, the dry run will see the participation of a select group of health care workers as test vaccine beneficiaries. Each centre will identify 25 test beneficiaries for the dry run.

The mock drill will ensure that phase 1 of Covid-19 vaccination goes without any glitch. The dry run will test linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges. The dry run will also test Co-WIN application, developed specifically for Covid-19 vaccination drive, in a field environment.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan chaired a high-level meeting



yesterday to review preparedness for the dry run. Head of the COVID Task Force and NITI Aayog Member Dr VK Paul said that the dry run of vaccination is important to ascertain the preparedness and operational functioning of COWIN under actual circumstances.

                         

States are also augmenting the state helpline 104 which will be used in addition to 1075 for any vaccine related query. Call centre executives have been given an orientation and capacity building training.

A two-day trial run was earlier conducted on December 28 and 29 in four states - Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat. The planned operations and the laid-out mechanisms for the drive was successful then.

Health and Family Welfare Ministry said 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.