Chennai: Ahead of the roll out of the vaccine to for coronavirus, dry run for administering the vaccine was held across all the districts in Tamilnadu, with Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan inspecting the state’s preparedness an the cold storage facilities.
The mock drill was being held as part of the nation-wide dry run being held 736 districts across 33 States/UTs in the country.
Dr Harsh Vardhan, who landed in the city last night, inspected the vaccine administration facilities at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital along with Health Minister Dr C Vijayabaskar and Health Secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan.
Later, he inspected the State’s preparedness on adminsitration of vaccine at Government Multi-Super Speciality Hospital at Omandurar Government Estate, visited the private vaccination centre in Apollo Hospital and the General Medical Store Depot (GMSD) in Periamedu, which is one of the four national vaccine storage facilities, the other three being Mumbai, Kolkata and Karnal.
Dr Vardhan also met Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and held discussions on the preparations for vaccination.
Later, Dr Vardhan also visited the vaccination Centre at Chengalpattu. He also visited the Hindustan Bio-Tech Ltd Campus at Chengalpattu, after concluding his supervision at these sites.
After the success of the dry run at 17 centres in five districts on 2 January, a full-fledged mock drill was conducted in all the 38 districts of the State today.
The dry run of vaccination was conducted in five places, including primary health centres, urban health centres, and government and private hospitals, in all the districts of the State.
The dry run conducted by the health department was to check the design of the waiting room, vaccination room and observation room, the entry points, availability of space and time taken to cover 100 persons a day.
All these aspects were rehearsed during the State-level dry run. Dr Radhakrishnan said the vaccine supply will be through the Central government.
The State has readied 51 walk-in coolers and there were two walk-in coolers exclusively for Covid-19 vaccines.
“Since, the Government Medical Stores Depot has to cover all southern States, we have said that if necessary, they can store in our (Tamilnadu) facilities also. We have a storage capacity of 2.5 crore doses,” he added.
He said the Centre has also allotted 33 lakh syringes to the State in the first phase, of which 28 lakh syringes had been received. This would be distributed to every health unit district on the basis of the healthcare workers’ population.
“When the Centre gives us the vaccine supply schedule, we will be ready with all measures to start vaccinations,” he said.
Dr Radhakrishnan said in the first phase, six lakh healthcare workers in the government, private sector and armed forces would receive the vaccination.
While, 47,000 vaccine sites were readied, the healthcare workers would be covered at nearly 3,000 sites with 100 persons a day. Once healthcare workers and frontline workers are covered, the vaccination will be open for the elderly.
The Health Secretary said the government has prioritized persons aged above 18 years for the vaccine.
Yesterday, Dr Harsh Vardhan held a meeting with the Health Ministers of all States.