The Central Government is reading itself to roll out COVID-19 vaccination programme across India. A dry run has been planned in four states- Gujarat, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab next week to prep before the full rollout.
Each of these four states will plan a dry run in two districts, preferably in different type settings such as a rural outreach or a private health facility or urban site. The states have been selected considering their geographical locations.
The test run will enable end-to-end mobilisation and assess the readiness of the planned activities for the COVID-19 vaccination process. It will test the usage of Co-Win in a field environment and help identify the challenges if there are any in the planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms and guide the way towards actual implementation of the envisaged vaccination programme.
Mock Drill: Key Highlights
•The dry run is expected to be conducted on December 28th and 29th. It will include a mock drill of session sites with test beneficiaries.
•The exercise will include testing of the cold storage sites and the transportation arrangements for the COVID-19 vaccine and management of crowd at the sites with physical distancing. This is expected to provide a hands-on experience to programme managers at various levels.
•The mock drill will also comprise monitoring and review at the block and district levels and preparation of feedback, which will be shared with the State and Union Health Ministry.
•The Union Health Ministry has prepared a detailed checklist for the same, which has been shared with the four states to guide them.
COVID-19 Vaccination programme: Training & Other Details
•The vaccine administrators are expected to play a huge role in the centre’s vaccination process. Hence, training of trainers and those who will administer the vaccine has been taken up across states.
•The centre has prepared detailed training modules for different categories of vaccine administrators and handlers.
•The training will include organization of vaccination sessions, use of Co-WIN IT platform for the management of the entire vaccination process, data managers, ASHA coordinators, management of adverse events, biomedical waste management and deployment of HR Cold chain preparedness.
•During the national-level training of trainers, around 2360 participants were trained including cold chain officers, development partners and state immunization officers.
•A total of 49,604 trainees have completed the training of medical officers on operational guidelines in 681 districts across the country.
•Further, to facilitate redressal of queries on COVID-19 vaccination and Co-WIN portal, the capacity of national helpline -1075 and state helpline- 104 has been strengthened.
Who will receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the first phase?
The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration of COVID-19 has recommended three priority population groups for the first phase of the vaccination process. The groups include:
- About 1 crore Healthcare Workers
- About 2 crore Frontline Workers
- About 27 crore prioritized age group.
Vaccine Storage
The COVID-19 vaccine will need to be stored in a specific temperature as they are temperature sensitive.
The current cold chain comprising 85, 634 equipment will be used for the storage of the vaccine at about 28, 947 cold chain points across the country.
India’s current cold chain system is capable of storing additional quantities of Covid-19 vaccine required for the first 3 Crore prioritised population comprising the Health Care Workers and Front Line Workers.
Background
India has eight COVID-19 vaccine candidates under different stages of trials, including three indigenous ones. The vaccines include the Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine- Covishield, ICMR-Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Russia’s Sputnik-V and Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D. The others include Serum Institute’s NVX-CoV2373 and Geneva’s HGC019 and two unlabelled vaccines by Bharat Biotech and Biological E Limited.
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