By Raju Vernekar
New Delhi/Mumbai, Jan 7:
The government is preparing for the third and possibly the final round of COVID-19 vaccination dry run on 8 January, Friday across 700 districts, across the country, ahead of the launch of the mass vaccination programme scheduled for next week.
Except for Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where the exercise had been scheduled for 5 January and 7 January, respectively, the vaccine dry run will cover all districts across other states.
”Each district will identify three types of session sites, similar to the previous dry run including a public health facility (district hospitals and medical colleges), private health facility and rural or urban outreach sites,” the Union health ministry said in a statement.
Union Minister of Health and Family welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan will hold a meeting with health ministers of all states and Union territories to brief them on the details of the exercise.
The planning of the vaccination drive, including beneficiary registration, micro-planning and vaccination at the planned session sites, will be directly supervised by the district collector or district magistrate, the government said.
The dry run will also familiarize the state, district, block and hospital level officers on all aspects of the immunization programme. This will help administrators in strengthening the linkages between planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms, identifying challenges prior to the actual implementation, and to provide confidence to the programme managers at all levels to implement the vaccination drive efficiently and smoothly, the government added.
The ministry of health and family welfare will be in constant touch with states and UTs throughout the day for feedback and provide support to ensure timely resolution of the challenges before the actual vaccination rollout.
To facilitate the entire process, a software, ‘Co-WIN’, has been developed by the health ministry for real-time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries for the covid-19 vaccine.
The software will assist programme managers across levels to conduct vaccination sessions. A 24×7 call centre has also been established for technical queries from Co-WIN users. The cold chain infrastructure (walk-in freezers, walk-in coolers, ice-lined refrigerators, deep freezers) and sufficient supplies of syringes and other logistics have already been ensured.
Around 170,000 vaccinators and 300,000 team members have been trained for verification of beneficiaries, vaccination process, cold chain and logistics management, bio-medical waste management, and adverse event following immunization (AEFI) management and for operating the Co-WIN software
