Coronavirus: States Gear Up For Nationwide Vaccine Dry Run Today, Govt Reviews Preparedness | Key Points

Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday held a meeting to review the preparedness.

All state governments and union territories are bracing themselves for the Covid-19 vaccine dry run today which will be a trial before the actual vaccination drive begins in India. Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat have successfully conducted dry run in the first phase. Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday held a meeting to review the preparedness.

Maharashtra will hold the dry run at Pune, Nagpur, Jalna and Nandurbar. Jharkhand will conduct the dry run in Ranchi, East Singhbhum, Chatra, Palamu and Pakur. Bengaluru Urban, Belagavi, Kalaburagi, Mysuru and Shivamogga will undergo the dry run in Karnataka. Tamil Nadu will conduct the dry run in Chennai, Nilgiris, Tirunevlevi, Tiruvallur and Coimbatore. Similarly, all states have identified dry run sites.

Here are some of the key points:

Three sites across the national capital have been selected for conducting a dry run for COVID-19 vaccination on Saturday, officials said. The activity is set to be conducted by all state and union territory administrations on January 2 to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges, the Centre had said on Thursday.

The Telangana government has the capacity toadminister the COVID-19 vaccine to about 10 lakh people per day once it is made available, Health Minister Eatala Rajender said and hoped that the state would not have to face the adverse impact of the virus this year. “Since the Centre has indicated that it would provide the vaccine on time, we are geared up and have trained about 10,000 health care personnel.

A day-long dry run to check the preparations for COVID-19 vaccination will be conducted in Pune district today. “Total of 17 registered beneficiaries would undergo the mock drill at three health care centres in Pune city, Pune rural and Pimpri Chinchwad,” said a senior official from the district health department.

A dry run to assess preparedness to roll out the COVID-19 vaccination drive will be conducted in seven districts in Chhattisgarh on Saturday, an official said. The dry run will be conducted in three centres in each of the seven districts, namely Raipur, Surguja, Bilaspur, Rajnandgaon, Durg, Bastar and Gaurela-Pendra-Marwahi (GPM), state Mission Director of National Health Mission (NHM) Priyanka Shukla told PTI.