Hospitals say dry run was a good practice days ahead of the vaccine roll out

The dry run was mainly to build confidence in the processes, resolve any issues that might arise, and to gain much needed practise in taking care of any adverse events that might happen during the immunisation drive.

With a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) days away from being rolled out, Delhi conducted a third dry run at multiple sites spread across all 11 districts on of the national capital Friday. The dry run was mainly to build confidence in the processes, resolve any issues that might arise, and to gain much needed practise in taking care of any adverse events that might happen during the immunisation drive.

The vaccination drive might begin Wednesday onwards, HT had reported on Friday. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

The vaccination drive might begin Wednesday onwards, HT had reported on Friday. The districts have long-listed 55 government and 105 private hospitals, each with over 100 health care workers, to receive the initial roll-out.

Meanwhile, officials of the Union health ministry informed the Delhi government on Friday that the vaccine will be rolled out at 89 sites in Delhi.

The vaccination sites will be a three-room set-up – the waiting room where beneficiaries will wait on arrival, the vaccination area, and the observation area.

There are four vaccine officers and a vaccinator designated for each site and they will verify each person’s ID before matching the name with the list on the government’s CoWIN portal, take a medical history and then administer the shot.The person is to wait in the observation room for 30 minutes to check if (s)he develops any allergic reactions, rashes, breathing difficulty, or fever.

At each site, 25 beneficiaries were called in on Friday to go through the mock drill that started at 9am and lasted two hours.

At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the site was in the employee health clinic on the eight floor of the outpatient block. “Since the health care workers would be the first to get vaccinated, we have created a site in the employee health clinic. Our nurses are already trained in the exercise and the whole process went smoothly,” said Dr DK Sharma, medical superintendent of the hospital.

Across the road, Safdarjung hospital created a vaccination site on the first floor of its old outpatient clinic block that was converted for Covid testing since the pandemic outbreak. “There are things like how to store the vaccine – even in the vaccine carrier boxes, there has to be a certain amount of ice and a certain number of doses. Or, how to take care of adverse events. The dry runs help those who haven’t taken part in such vaccination drives previously understand the processes,” said Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at the hospital.

All sites will have an “adverse event following immunisation (AEFI)” kit present and it will contain medicines such as atropine, epinephrine, antihistamine for allergies and paracetamol for fever to take care of any immediate reactions/ side effects.

The government has decided to conduct the vaccination drives at 55 government hospitals and 105 private hospitals initially– before starting them in dispensaries – to see what reactions might happen and ensure timely treatment of those who suffer such reactions.

At private hospitals selected as centres, the vaccines will be supplied by the Delhi government and will be available for free to beneficiaries. The sites will draw staff from the hospital but will have government appointed supervisors present.

“At first, the beneficiaries will be from our own hospital. A list of our staff members who are experienced in vaccinations has already been sent to the Delhi government. They will now be trained for a couple of days on using the government portal and the vaccination process. However, some government staff will also be present during the actual drive,” said Dr Amiya Verma, deputy medical superintendent of Max hospital, Patparganj, which also conducted a dry run on Friday.

He said the only hitch o Friday was that many of the staff members called in as beneficiaries had carried their hospital ID instead of a government issued ID needed for the vaccination drive.

“It gave us an understanding of how everything needs to be arranged for the actual drive,” he said.

India’s drugs controller on Sunday granted restricted emergency approval to two companies for their Covid-19 vaccines.

The first vaccine to become available in Delhi will likely be the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, called Covishield in India, and manufactured by Pune’s Serum Institute of India. The other vaccine that has been granted approval for “restricted use in emergency situations” is Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.