Dry run of COVID-19 vaccination drive in eight districts across four states next week

By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: In yet another signal that a COVID-19 vaccination programme could soon start in the country, the Centre has planned a dry run of the vaccination process in four states — Punjab, Gujarat, Assam and Andhra Pradesh next week.

As per the plan, two districts in each of these states across the country’s four zones will check their preparedness in five types of medical settings – district hospitals, community and public healthcare centres, urban and rural areas and private facilities on December 28 and 29.

Significantly, the exercise — a precursor to the actual programme — will focus on management of any possible adverse events following immunisation besides conducting mock drills, checking usage of Co-WIN vaccine registration app, storage and transport preparedness and crowd management.

Also, adherence and management of infection control practices at the site will be checked to ensure that the drive does not lead to disease transmission.

The government has identified three priority groups—healthcare and frontline workers, people above 50 and those with comorbidities for the first phase of COVID-19 immunisation. Overall, these comprise 30 crore of India’s population.

As of now three companies have approached the apex drug regulator for emergency use authorisation of their vaccines in India but their applications are still under review.

Meanwhile a statement by the Union health and family welfare ministry said that the dry run is meant  “to strengthen the capacity of our human resource for introduction and roll-out, detailed training modules have been developed for different categories of vaccine handlers and administrators including medical officers, vaccinators, alternate vaccinators, cold chain handlers, supervisors, data managers, ASHA coordinators and all others involved in the implementation process at different levels.”

The Centre said that the exercise will provide hands-on experience to programme managers at various levels.

It will include activities from the necessary data entries in Co-WIN to vaccine receipt and allocation to deployment of team members, mock drill of session sites with test beneficiaries to reporting and evening meetings.

“This will also include testing for cold storage and transportation arrangements for COVID-19 vaccine, management of crowds at the session sites with proper physical distancing,” said the statement.

Overall, 2,360 participants were trained including state immunization officers, cold chain officers, IEC officials and development partners among others.

As per details shared by the government, state level training had been completed in all states with participation of more than 7000 district level trainees, except Lakshadweep which will conduct it next week.

Cascading down, 681 districts (49,604 trainees) have completed the training of medical officers on operational guidelines. Vaccination team training has been completed in 1399 out of 17831 blocks or planning units and it is ongoing in the other blocks.