Chennai: Five days after the first dry run, a second such exercise for Covid-19 vaccination will be held in all the states on Friday.
It has been informed that the day-long drive on Friday will again test the operational feasibility of CoWIN application in a field environment.
During the dry run, over 20 health workers get dummy vaccines at each site, which is meant to test the mechanisms and reveal possible gaps in the system ahead of the actual vaccination drive.
Aadhaar authentication and SMS confirming vaccination in at least 12 languages are some of the features of the CoWIN app that India is developing to inoculate millions of people against Covid-19. The first round of dry run was held on 2 January.
A meeting of Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan with the state/ UT Health Ministers will be held today to guide them on the conduct of dry run. Uttar Pradesh and Haryana will be exempted from the country-wide exercise as the former will conduct the mock drill on 7 January while the latter conducted it on 5 January.
Around 1.7 lakh vaccinators and 3 lakh vaccination team members have been trained on the process to be followed at the vaccination sites which include beneficiary verification, vaccination, cold chain and logistics management, bio-medical waste management, AEFI management and reporting on Co-WIN software.
All the anti-coronavirus vaccines developed in India can be stored at 2-8 degree Celsius as the logistics have been worked out considering temperature as a factor, Department of Biotechnology Secretary Renu Swarup said on Tuesday.
India has cleared Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield manufactured by the Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.
The Central government plans to vaccinate nearly 30 crore people in the first phase of drive. It will be offered to one crore healthcare workers, along with two crore frontline and essential workers and 27 crore elderly, mostly above the age of 50 years with co-morbidities.