Ahead of innoculation campaign, Centre to conduct another Covid-19 vaccine dry run on January 8

Ahead of the much-awaited launch of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, a nationwide dry run on 700-plus districts will be conducted on January 8, to ensure efficient planning and management for vaccine delivery.

Uttar Pradesh and Haryana would be two exceptions as the first one had conducted such an exercise on January 5 and the latter planned to do so on January 7, the Union Health Ministry said in a statement.

This would be the second large-scale dry run of the vaccination campaign in January, which comes close on the heels of a similar exercise at 286 districts in 125 districts on January 2.

Each district will identify three types of session sites, similar to the previous dry run including a public health facility (district hospital/medical college), private health facility and rural or urban outreach sites. At each site, 25 beneficiaries would receive a mock vaccine.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday will hold a review meeting with the State Health Ministers on the conduct of the dry run.

With two vaccines approved for restricted emergency use, the Centre plans to commence the Covid-19 mass inoculation campaign with one crore healthcare and two crore front line workers. However, the Union Health Ministry is yet to sign commercial pacts with the two vaccine manufacturers – Serum Institute, Pune and Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad.

The entire planning of the vaccination drive including beneficiary registration, microplanning and vaccination at the planned session site, will be tested under the leadership of District Collector or District Magistrate. The dry run will familiarize the state, district, block and hospital level officers on all aspects of the rollout.

Around 1.7 lakh vaccinators and 3 lakh vaccination team members have been trained on the process to be followed at the vaccination sites that include beneficiary verification, vaccination, cold chain and logistics management, bio-medical waste management, adverse event management and reporting on Co-WIN software that will provide real time information of vaccine stocks and their storage temperature besides tracking the recipients.

Meanwhile, the Centre on Wednesday dispatched a high-level team to Kerala to review the public health interventions after the state reported more than 35,000 Covid-19 cases in the last seven days.

Headed by S K Singh, director, National Centre for Disease Control, the team would discuss the challenges with state officials to find out appropriate solutions.

While India’s daily Covid-19 death count is on a steady decline, the cumulative toll crossed the 150,000 mark on Wednesday. The total number of active cases dropped to 2.27 lakh, of which 18,088 were added in the last 24 hours.