As it came closer to the roll-out of the first COVID-19 vaccine, India held a dry run by all states and union territories on Saturday in preparation for a massive vaccination drive, with Health Minister Harsh Vardhan appealing to people not to be misguided by rumours and disinformation regarding the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccine.
Vardhan said that a free vaccine would be provided in the first phase to the most prioritised beneficiaries, including one crore healthcare and two crore frontline workers. He said
the details of how 27 crore priority beneficiaries — those above 50 years of age and those below it having comorbidities — would be vaccinated until July were being finalised.
In the national capital, where the dry run was held at three sites, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that free coronavirus vaccine will be provided to the people in the city. Interacting with reporters during a visit to a facility in Daryaganj, he said the system “seems flawless” as of now.
The dry-run was being conducted in state capitals in at least three session sites. Some states also included districts that are situated in difficult terrain or have poor logistical support, according to officials.
Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat conducted the mock drill in four districts each, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in five districts each while Rajasthan carried out the dry-run in seven districts.
India has reported 1.03 crore COVID-19 cases so far and the exercise was held a day after the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) on COVID-19 of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) recommended granting permission for restricted emergency use of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine Covishield, paving the way for the roll-out of the first anti-COVID-19 shot in the country in the next few days.
The first dry run was conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Punjab on December 28-29 with at least 125 intended beneficiaries at five sites in a maximum of two districts each.
The union health ministry had said that no major issues were observed during the pilot dry run and all states had expressed confidence in the operational guidelines and IT platform for large-scale programme implementation.
Specific teams were formed for various tasks conducted on Saturday’s rehearsal by the district administrations and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communicating vaccination details to beneficiaries and vaccinators, and beneficiary mobilisation, etc were carried out.
“I appeal to the people not to be misguided by rumours regarding safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine. We will not compromise on any protocol before approving a vaccine,” Vardhan said, underlining that vaccine hesitancy was an issue even when the country started the polio immunisation drive, but “we must remember its success”.