On December 29, the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare concluded a two-day dry run for activities entailed in Covid-19 vaccination in the four states of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat.
Backed with the experience of rolling out Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) and conducting nationwide multiple wide-range injectable vaccination campaigns such as the measles-rubella (MR) and adult Japanese Encephalitis (JE) campaign, the required steps are being undertaken to vaccinate priority population groups like healthcare workers, frontline workers and people aged above 50 years for Covid-19.
The dry run exercise is 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 the block, district and state level. The objective of the dry run is also to undertake and confirm field implementation of the IT platform Co-WIN and guide the way forward prior to actual implementation.
District Collectors with engagement of district and block task force were made responsible for conducting the dry run. 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 of vaccination details to vaccinators and beneficiaries, beneficiary mobilization were carried out.
Field feedback on the first day of dry run was also reviewed on December 29 through video-conferencing with State & District Programme officers by Joint Secretary (Public Health). All states expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and also in the use of the IT platform to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes which are expected to cover a large number of people across the country. Additional suggestions on the IT platform were also noted for further enhancement of the Co-WIN platform.
Detailed insights and feedback so obtained will help enrich the operational guidelines and IT platform and will strengthen the Covid-19 vaccination roll out plan.
(Published from PIB)