VIJAYAWADA: The two-day Covid-19 vaccination dry run began at the five selected medical facilities in Krishna district on Monday. About 95 per cent of selected beneficiaries attended the dry run on the first day. District Collector A Md Imtiaz, who launched the dry run of the vaccination programme at an Urban Primary Health Centre (UPHC) in Vijayawada, said, “The aim of conducting the dry run is to pay attention to the management of all possible adverse events that are expected to arise after immunising people during the actual process, which will be done once the vaccine is released.”
Apart from the mock drill of administering the vaccine, other activities such as transportation of the vaccine from the cold storage, ambulance facility in case any vaccinated person needs to be shifted hospital post immunisation due to development of abnormalities, feasibility of CoWin IT application, deployment of team members and mock drill test are also being conducted during the two-day run, he said.
A detailed report of the observations during the run will be prepared by the district medical and health officer, district collector, health commissioner and the 125 beneficiaries (health workers) on whom the dummy vaccine is being administered as part of the dry run.
“The report will be submitted to the State Task Force, which will help us take further actions, things to modify and procedures to better. The same report will also be sent to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,” the Collector said. “We have observed that a minimum of 45 minutes are needed to conduct the entire procedure on one person,” said Dr K Raja, medical officer of Prakash Nagar UPHC.