COVID-19 vaccine: India witnesses dry run to test systems  

As India gears up to launch the world's largest immunisation drive, almost all states and Union Territory (UT) governments, including the national capital, conducted a dry run on Saturday to assess their ability and readiness to administer COVID-19 shots to hundreds of millions of people, including many in remote corners of the country.

On the Centre's directive, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana along with Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Gujarat were among many states and UTs who conducted a dry run for COVID-19 vaccination earlier in the day, aimed at testing the laid out mechanisms for the vaccination roll-out in the health system.

Rajasthan Health Department on Saturday conducted dry runs for anti-Covid vaccination at 19 centres of seven districts of the state as per the Centre's protocol for the inoculation, an official said.

During the dry runs, the support staff for the inoculation were given training and the state now is ready for the vaccination after receiving the vaccine, he said.

Dry runs for the universal vaccination as per the protocol received from the Centre were held Saturday at 19 centres of seven districts of the state, Health Secretary Siddharth Mahajan told reporters.

Rajasthan is fully prepared now for the first phase of vaccination, he added.

Ajmer CMHO Dr K K Soni said in the first phase, vaccine dose will be given to frontline health workers and about 20,000 health workers in Ajmer will be vaccinated.

He said the vaccination will be done in an interval of 42 days and a message received on the mobile phone needs to be shown for the second vaccination.

The Goa government too carried out a dry run of the Covid-19 vaccination exercise at three government health facilities and one private hospital in the state.

Similarly, the vaccination drill was conducted in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana too.

The Centre had directed earlier to conduct a dry run by all state and UTs on January 2 to test the linkages between planning and implementation, and to identify the challenges.

As per the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, all states selected their particular areas and districts to hold the dry run exercise at various government medical college, hospitals, medical centres and the community health centres.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and World Health Organization (WHO), officials said, supported the drive.

In the drive, the medical officer in-charge identified several beneficiaries (healthcare workers).

The states and union territories have been asked to ensure that the data of beneficiaries is uploaded on Co-WIN, an online platform for monitoring the delivery of the vaccine.

Similar exercise for the distribution and administration of Covid-19 vaccine was conducted in various states and UTs separately on different occasions in December.

While visiting one of dry run centres, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday said that one crore healthcare workers and two crore frontline workers would be given free vaccine in the first phase of the inoculation drive.

"In the first phase of vaccination, free vaccine will be provided across the nation to most prioritised beneficiaries that include one crore healthcare and 2 crore frontline workers," Vardhan said in a tweet.

He, however, added, that the details of how the remaining 27 crore priority beneficiaries will be vaccinated till July is still being finalised.

The central government plans to vaccinate nearly 30 crore people in the first phase of the immunisation drive. The vaccine will be administered to one crore healthcare workers, along with 2 crore frontline and essential workers, and 27 crore elderly, mostly above the age of 50 with co-morbidities.

With input from agencies