Ghaziabad to use colour-coded slips during actual vaccination drive

On Monday, Yashoda Hospital nurse Harjeet Kaur got a text messaging asking her to be at the hospital at 10 am to get her Covid-19 vaccine shot.

On Monday, Yashoda Hospital nurse Harjeet Kaur got a text messaging asking her to be at the hospital at 10 am to get her Covid-19 vaccine shot.

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She was among the 50 practice volunteers called to help the Ghaziabad district administration figure out if they had any chinks in their process before the actual vaccine is rolled out.

“It took me about 40-45 minutes to complete the entire run,” said Kaur. “Once I entered, I had to verify my identification which I did through driving license. That hardly took a minute after which I was seated inside a waiting area. In another 3-4 minutes, I was assigned a vaccine session room where the vaccination was administered in another minute.”

Then, after 30 minutes in the observation room, where the real vaccine beneficiaries would be observed for any adverse reaction, she was out.

Hospital’s chief medical officer Dr Sangeeta Garg said, “We have prepared two rooms for vaccination session and one more room will come up soon. The entire process for beneficiaries was expected to last 45 minutes each and the dry run went smoothly as planned.”

The Ghaziabad health department completed the dry run at IDST College at Modi Nagar, ITS Dental College at Muradnagar, community health centre at Loni, Gayatri Hospital at Lohiya Nagar, Yashoda Hospital at Nehru Nagar and Santosh Hospital near old bus-stand.

During the dry run process, two batches of 25 beneficiaries each were assigned to two vaccine-session rooms each at the six sites. In all, 300 beneficiaries took part during the dry run process.

The health department officials said that the actual vaccination process would be similar to the dry run.

“At one vaccination centre we observed that the vaccination rooms should be assigned a colour and the beneficiaries should also be given similar coloured slips so that they easily can be identified and assigned to respective room. At another site we found that the forms with instructions written for vaccination process were not printed,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer.

He said that at one other site they found that the observation room was in an emergency ward.

“We directed that the room be a separate enclosure in order to ensure privacy and also to ensure that other patients do not panic. At one other site we found that the home guards reached late. So, directions were issued to the competent officials to ensure timely arrival,” Dr Gupta, added.

Tuesday evening, district magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey also attended a video-conference with the UP chief minister and other district magistrates.

“The CM told all officials to adhere to strict phase wise vaccination process. People must get the vaccine in the manner directed by the Centre. During the dry run, we observed some issues and they have been corrected,” he, added.

The health department has identified 21,850 healthcare workers who would be taking the shots under phase 1 when the actual vaccine arrives. The second phase is for frontline workers which are estimated to be about 44000 in the district while the third category will have highest number of beneficiaries estimated to be more than 500,000.

“We estimate that the first and the second phase will be conducted smoothly while we will have to make extra efforts for the third phase as beneficiaries will be much higher in number,” said an officer from the health department.