India has concluded a two-day dry run to check preparedness for large-scale dissemination of Covid-19 vaccination across the country.

The union ministry of health & family welfare conducted the dry run for “activities entailed in Covid-19 vaccination” in four states – Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat – on December 28-29.

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 years for Covid-19, the ministry said in a release Tuesday.

The dry run exercise is aimed at end-to-end testing of Covid-19 vaccination process and will include planning and preparations as per the Operational Guidelines; creation of facilities and users on Co-WIN application, session site creation and mapping of sites, health care workers (HCW) data upload, receipt of vaccines and vaccine allocation by the district, session planning, deployment of vaccination team, logistics mobilization at session site, mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state level. The objective of dry the run is also to undertake and confirm field implementation of IT platform Co-WIN and guide way forward prior to actual implementation.

District collectors with engagement of district and block task forces were made responsible for conducting the dry run and it was expected to provide insights on any gaps or bottlenecks during actual conduct of vaccination.

The end-to-end dry run was undertaken in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.

Specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administration and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary’s data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators& beneficiaries, beneficiary mobilization were carried out.

Field feedback on the first day of dun run was also reviewed on December 29 through video conferencing with state & district programme officers by joint secretary (public health). 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.

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