CHENNAI/PUDUCHERRY/TIRUNELVELI: Every Covid vaccine centre in Tamil Nadu will be equipped to vaccinate 100 people daily, Health Secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan said on Saturday after launching the dry run for vaccination at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai. The dry run is being held simultaneously at 17 centres in the State.
“The actual vaccine will not be administered during the dry run, and only the process is being tested to check if the system will work smoothly. The centre hall will have separate entry and exit doors. One staff will check the beneficiaries’ basic details, while another will confirm them with information on the CoWin app, which will have the complete list of beneficiaries,” Radhakrishnan said.
Following confirmation, the beneficiary would be taken to the vaccination room for the dry run. Doctors will be available in an observation room where the vaccinated beneficiaries will be monitored. On Saturday, around 2,000 staff were engaged in the dry run and were allotted 25 people to ‘vaccinate’ at each centre. The Health Secretary said that not more than 100 people will be given shots at each centre in a day, owing to social distancing restrictions.
However, we will try to increase the size of the vaccination rooms, he added. A total of six lakh health workers have registered for the vaccination so far and the government plans to vaccinate 1.6 crore people this year. “We have communicated details of the dry run to the Central government, and the World Health Organisation and UNICEF are also observing the process,” he further said. At present, Tamil Nadu has 51 cold-storage facilities at the State level and 2,600 other vaccine points. Sources told Express that tenders were invited for providing 10 more cold storage facilities with a storage capacity of -80 degree Celsius.
Trial run successful in Pondy
The dry run was successfully completed in Puducherry without hiccups as per the guidelines of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. “We are ready for vaccination”, Deputy Director Immunisation Dr M Murugan said. It was conducted at nine centres in the UT — four in Puducherry, three in Karaikal and one each in Yanam and Mahe.