Chennai: In what is touted to be India’s largest and most ambitious mass immunisation programme, the Centre is all set to begin dry runs of Covid-19 vaccine distribution in four States of Punjab, Assam, Andhra and Gujarat.
The exercise will include all steps except the actual administering of the vaccine, including necessary data entry in Co-WIN, an online platform for monitoring of vaccine delivery, testing receipt and allocation, deployment of team members, mock drill of session sites with test beneficiaries, the Union Health Ministry had said.
It will also include testing of cold storage and transportation arrangements for the vaccine, and management of crowd at session sites with proper physical distancing.
Each State will plan it in two districts and preferably in five different session-type settings: District hospital, community health centre (CHC) or primary health care centre (PHC), urban site, private health facility and rural outreach.
“This exercise will enable end-to-end mobilisation and testing of vaccination process (except the vaccine) and check the usage of Co-WIN in field environment, linkages between planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms, identify challenges and guide the way forward prior to actual implementation including improvements that may be required in the envisaged process,” the Health Ministry said in a statement last week.
Meanwhile, India has decided that five percent of the positive cases of Covid-19 from all States and UTs will be tested for Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), even as the country registered the lowest single-day rise in Covid-19 cases in nearly six months at 18,732.