India to hold second nationwide Covid-19 vaccination dry run today

The drill will be the largest undertaken so far covering 737 districts in 33 states and Union Territories

A second nationwide drill to test the country’s preparedness for conducting a mammoth Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccination drive is set to be conducted on Friday across 737 districts in 33 states and Union Territories.

A health worker takes part in a dry run for Covid-19 vaccine delivery at a model Covid-19 vaccination centre at Ansari Road in New Delhi on January 2.(Sanchit Khanna/HT file)

Friday’s drill will be the largest undertaken in the country so far. The first countrywide drill that was held on January 2 covered 74 districts. The first dry run was carried out in just eight districts in four states on December 28-29.

“The lessons learnt from the earlier exercises will be made use of to execute another dry run. Whatever was lacking earlier has been rectified, and will be tested in Friday’s dry run,” Union health minister Harsh Vardhan told states and Union Territories in an online meeting on Thursday.

The planning of the vaccination drive, including beneficiary registration, microplanning and vaccination at the planned session site, will be tested under the leadership of district collector or district magistrate.

The dry run will also familiarise the state, district, block and hospital level officers on all aspects of Covid-19 roll-out.

This activity is aimed to help administrators in strengthening the linkages between planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms, identification of any residual challenges prior to the actual implementation and to provide confidence to the programme managers at all levels to carry out a smooth implementation of the vaccination drive.

The exercise is to test the Co-WIN digital platform, which is the backbone of Covid-19 vaccine delivery management system, to provide real time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualised tracking of beneficiaries of the Covid-19 vaccine.

This platform will assist the programme managers across all levels through automated session allocation for pre-registered beneficiaries, their verification and for generating a digital certificate upon successful completion of the vaccine schedule. At least 7.8million beneficiaries have already been registered on the platform.