Govt readies for vaccination across country
The Government is all set to launch the vaccination drive for Covid-19 across the country and has planned a dry run in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Punjab next week.
The detailed checklist has been prepared by the Union Health Ministry and shared with the four States to guide them in the dry run planned on December 28 and 29 as a step to prepare before the actual vaccination takes off.
According to the Ministry, each State will plan the dry run in two districts. Preferably this will be in different session type settings, for example, district hospital, urban site, private health facility, rural outreach.
“This exercise will enable end-to-end mobilisation and testing of Covid-19 vaccination process and check the usage of Co-WIN in field environment,” the Ministry said.
It would also enable linkages between planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms and identify challenges and guide the way forward prior to actual implementation, including improvements that may be required in the envisaged process.
This will also provide a hands-on experience to programme managers at various levels and will include activities from the necessary data entries in Co-WIN to vaccine receipt and allocation to deployment of team members, mock drill of session sites with test beneficiaries to reporting and evening meeting.
Over 2,360 participants were trained during national level training comprising State immunisation officers, cold chain officers, IEC officials, development partners, etc.
As on date, the State-level trainings had been completed in all States and UTs with participation of more than 7,000 district level trainees, except Lakshadweep which will conduct it on December 29.
Cascading down, 681 districts (49,604 trainees) have completed the training of Medical Officers on operational guidelines. Vaccination team trainings have been completed in 1,399 out of 17,831 blocks and planning units. It is going on in the other blocks.
The dry run will also include testing for cold storage and transportation arrangements for Covid-19 vaccine, management of crowd at the session sites with proper physical distancing.
An important focus of the dry run will be on management of any possible adverse events following immunisation (AEFI). In addition, adherence and management of infection control practices at the session site, to prevent disease transmission.
“The mock drill will include concurrent monitoring and review at the block and district levels, and preparation of feedback to be shared with the State and Union Health Ministry. Detailed checklist has been prepared by the Union health Ministry and shared with the four States to guide them in the dry run,” added the Ministry.
India has eight Covid-19 vaccine candidates, including three indigenous vaccines, under different stages of clinical trials which could be ready for authorization in near future.
It includes AstraZeneca and Oxford University developed and Serum Institute of India manufactured Covishield, Covaxin by Bharat Biotech Limited, ZyCoV-D by Zydus Cadila and Russian vaccine candidate Sputnik-V.
The list also contains NVX-CoV2373 by SII, HGCO19 by Geneva, and two unlabeled vaccines-Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine by Biological E Limited-and Inactivated rabies vector platform by Bharat Biotech.
The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration of COVID-19 (NEGVAC) has recommended three prioritised population groups including Healthcare Workers (HCWs) (about 1 crore), Frontline Workers (about 2 crore), and Prioritised Age Group (about 27 crore).
Saturday, 26 December 2020 | PNS | New Delhi
