Dry run for administering Covid-19 vaccine is just mock exercise, clarifies Deputy Commissioner

Ludhiana: Amid the confusion over conducting a dry-run for administering Covid 19 vaccine, the Deputy Commissioner Ludhiana Varinder Kumar Sharma on Monday, clarified that the dry run is just a mock exercise to rehearse the administration of the vaccine.

“Although, the whole process of 72-hours from preparing medicine boxes, sending SMS to beneficiaries to inviting beneficiaries at the vaccine centres will be followed in this dry run, the actual vaccination drive will be carried out after receiving the vaccines only,” said Deputy Commissioner.

Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma accompanied by Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC Development) Sandeep Kumar, Civil Surgeon Dr Rajesh Bagga and SDM Ludhiana East Baljinder Singh Dhillon was here at District Civil Hospital to inspect the dry run on the first day. On first day of dry run, SMS were sent to the beneficiaries to visit the vaccine centres on Day-2 i.e. Tuesday.

Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma, while interacting with the media informed that the dry run would be conducted at seven locations including Civil Hospital Ludhiana, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital besides one in each sub division namely Raikot, Jagraon, Machhiwara, Khanna and Payal.

He said that this activity is aimed at testing the laid out mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccination roll-out in the health system. He said that the dry run will exercise end to end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process and will vaccinate pre-identified beneficiaries from specified groups supported by Co-WIN, an electronic application. The primary objective of the dry run included assessing the operational feasibility of using Co-WIN application in the field environment and to test linkages between planning. Implementation and reporting mechanisms would identify challenges and guideway forward prior to actual implementation.

Meanwhile, in the first phase, more than 30,000 healthcare workers (both government and private) of district Ludhiana, who have registered themselves on the government portal, would be administered the Covid 19 vaccine.