India's two-day Covid vaccine dry run concludes smoothly, says health ministry

Indian government's two-day dry run of the Covid-19 vaccination drive on Monday and Tuesday in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Gujarat concluded smoothly with minor hiccups that are being addressed, the Union health ministry said.

The drive is slated to begin early next year.

The mock exercise was aimed at end-to-end testing of Covid-19 vaccination process and included planning and preparations as per the operational guidelines. It involved the creation of facilities and users on Co-WIN application, session site creation and mapping of sites, health care workers data upload, receipt of vaccines and vaccine allocation, session planning, deployment of vaccination teams, and logistics mobilisation at session sites.

There was also mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at the block, district and state levels.

"The objective of dry the run is also to undertake and confirm field implementation of IT platform Co-WIN and guideway forward prior to actual implementation. District collectors, with the engagement of district and block task force, were made responsible for conducting the dry run and it was expected to provide insights on any gaps or bottlenecks during the actual conduct of vaccination," the ministry said in a statement.

The dry run was undertaken in Krishna (Andhra Pradesh); Rajkot and Gandhinagar (Gujarat); Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Punjab); Sonitpur and Nalbari (Assam).

Specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administrations. Activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators and beneficiaries, and beneficiary mobilisation were carried out.

Field feedback on the first day of the dry run was also reviewed on Tuesday. "All states expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and use of IT platform to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes expected to cover a large number of people across the country. Additional suggestions on IT platform were also noted for further enhancement of Co-WIN platform," the ministry said.

It added detailed insights and feedback so obtained will help enrich the operational guidelines and IT platform and will strengthen the Covid-19 vaccination rollout plan.

"Backed with the experience of rolling out Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) and conducting nationwide multiple wide-range injectable vaccination campaigns such as measles-rubella (MR) and Adult Japanese Encephalitis (JE) campaign, required steps are being undertaken to vaccinate priority population groups such as health care workers, frontline workers and people above 50..."