Govt ready for COVID-19 vaccine rollout soon, dry run to be conducted in 4 states

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Friday said that the mechanism for the roll-out of COVID19 vaccine across the country is being readied and the dry run for administering the anti-COVID-19 jab will be conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat and Punjab next week.

“Dry run for vaccine administration will be conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat and Punjab next week. This will exercise enable end-to-end mobilisation and testing of COVID-19 vaccination process (except the vaccine) and check the usage of Co-WIN,” the government said, according to ANI.

It further stated that, “Till today, the state-level training have been completed in all States/UTs with the participation of more than 7000 district level trainees, except Lakshadweep which will conduct it soon on 29th December.’’

Dry run for vaccine administration will be conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat & Punjab next week. This will exercise enable end-to-end mobilisation and testing of COVID-19 vaccination process (except the vaccine) and check the usage of Co-WIN: Govt of India https://t.co/N5T2M1vveA

— ANI (@ANI) December 25, 2020

According to reports, the Government has chosen Punjab among the four states to conduct the dry run of CoViD-19 vaccine on December 28 and December 29, 2020. 

The districts Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar have been selected as the two districts where the dry run for COVID-19 vaccine shall be carried out and 5 sights would be identified in each district. It was disclosed by the Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu in press communiqué.

Disclosing this, Sidhu said that the dry run is aimed at testing the laid-out mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccination roll-out in the health system. It will provide insights on any gaps or bottlenecks so that those could be addressed before the commencement of the COVID-19 drive. 

The dry run is to be conducted in one or two districts, under the overall leadership of District Collector/Magistrate, he added.

The Minister said that immunization partners UNDP and the WHO at the state level would support this activity. All activities starting from beneficiary data upload, session site allocation (micro-planning), session site management (with test beneficiaries) to reporting and evening debriefing are to be covered in this 2-day dry run to execute the nearest possible simulation of the actual day.

Feedback of dry run in District and State Task Force will be pertinent for remedial action (if required), he said.

Meanwhile, with 23,068 new COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours, India`s total cases count reached on 1,01,46,846 on Friday, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. With 336 new deaths, the cumulative toll mounted to 1,47,092. At present, there are 2,81,919 active cases in the country.

After 24,661 new discharges in the last 24 hours, the overall recoveries reached 97,17,834. Kerala is now the worst-affected state with 63,328 active coronavirus infections, followed by Maharashtra with 56,022 active cases.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a total of 16,63,05,762 samples tested for COVID-19 up to December 23, of these, 9,97,396 samples were tested yesterday.

On Thursday, the Union Health Ministry said that the share of active cases in the total positive cases has further shrunk to 2.80 per cent and the recovery rate has also increased to 95.75 per cent.