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COVID-19 vaccine dry run for rollout starts in four states

NEW DELHI: In bid to assess the preparedness for the actual COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the country at various medical facility settings in the country, the government is carrying out dry runs in four states to test the planned operations.

The two days crucial exercise which started on Monday and continues throughout today in four states of Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Assam will primarily focus on management of possible adverse events after immunisation, and the two other key other logistics factors like transportation arrangements and cold storage of the immunisation program.

According to information provided by the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare which is conducting this exercise, it has chosen one state each from the north, south, east and west, and the two days end-to-end dry run will be 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.

The Union Health Ministry has formed specific teams for specific various tasks by the district administration and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary’s data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators & beneficiaries, and carrying out beneficiary mobilization.

By the end of the day on Monday a total of 2,360 training sessions have been held and 7,000 officials including medical officers and vaccinators have been trained. When the first phase of actual inoculation is rolled out, the government plans to cover nearly 30 crore people.

Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar of the Krishna district told reporters that the dry run will provide insights into any gaps or bottlenecks that could be addressed before the commencement of the actual drive.

"After the dry run is over, the teams will prepare a report for the individual State Task Force which will help them review the feedback and act as a guide for further actions, the same data will also be submitted to the Union Health Ministry," Bhaskar said.

Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute of India (SII) and Pfizer have already applied to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), seeking emergency use authorisation (EUA) for their COVID-19 vaccines to the subject expert committee (SEC) of the national drugs regulator. The SEC is expected to meet soon to take a final decision.

Meanwhile India today surpassed a crucial milestone in its fight against the pandemic today with the daily new cases touching a new of less than 16,500 daily new cases (16,432) added to the national tally in the last 24 hours after 187 days. The daily new cases were 16,922 on 25th June, 2020.

According to the Union Health Ministry release, a net decline of 8,720 cases has been recorded in the total active cases in last 24 hours. "India’s active caseload has fallen to 2,68,581 today. The share of Active Cases in the total Positive Cases has further compressed to 2.63% of the cumulative caseload." the release said.

With over 1.02 crore coronavirus cases so far, India stands as the second highest in the world after the United States with COVID-19 infected people. Over 1.47 lakh people have died after contracting the virus, one of the most infectious the world has seen in decades.

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  • Devendra Ahirwar
    Devendra Ahirwar

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