WEB DESK
The dry run for COVID-19 Vaccination has been successfully conducted in four states of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat today.
According to the Union Health Ministry the two-day end-to-end dry run was undertaken in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts of Assam. The exercise is aimed at identifying challenges and making required changes in the plan so that the final process becomes foolproof.
The Ministry said specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administration and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary’s data, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators and beneficiaries, and beneficiary mobilization were carried out.
The objective of the dry run was also to undertake and confirm field implementation of IT platform Co-WIN and guide way forward prior to actual implementation. Detailed insights and feedback will help enrich the operational guidelines and IT platform and will strengthen the Covid-19 vaccination roll out plan.
In Punjab, as many as 25 persons were identified among Health Workers as beneficiaries yesterday and their required data uploaded on the portal created for dry run by Government of India. Punjab Health Minister Mr. Balbir Singh Sidhu said that the beneficiaries were allocated vaccination sites and they received SMS successfully informing the date, time and place of vaccination and Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) management centres identified and linked with vaccination sites.
Mr. Sidhu said that today on the second day of the trial run lists of beneficiaries printed and provided to vaccination teams. He said that the beneficiaries came physically and they were verified in the portal. They followed the process and waited for 30 minutes. He said that arrangements of biomedical waste management were also made. 104 Helpline was tested making a phone call and correct information was provided by help line operators to all beneficiaries.
Giving details about teams deputed for the vaccination program, he said that vaccinator and 4 additional team members were identified and vaccination teams were allocated vaccination sites at all 12 sites as per micro-plan finalized for the program. He said that a team of supervisors were also appointed to overview the first phase of dry run so as to ensure the smooth run of all activities as per SOPs.