What Is Vaccine Dry Run? Do They Give COVID Shots?

A dry run of coronavirus vaccine has been conducted in all states on Saturday. Dry run is basically a rehearsal session in which a few beneficiaries would go through a  mock immunisation process. A dry run will provide insights into how the entire process is going on and if any problem occurs, it could be solved before the commencement of the actual drive.

In addition to the staff of the designated vaccination centres, a small group of health care professionals will also take part in the dry run. 25 test beneficiaries for the dry run will be listed by each centre. The dry run would be carried out in five sessions at identified locations. All the beneficiaries will be identified before and they should be registered on the co-WIN portal.

After the dry run, a report will be submitted to the state Task Force. The vaccinators will follow the process of enrollment, verification, mock vaccination and post-vaccine observation.

The union ministry said that, "The objective of the dry run for Covid-19 vaccine introduction is to assess operational feasibility in the use of Co-WIN application in a field environment, to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges and guide way forward prior to actual implementation. This is also expected to give confidence to programme managers at various levels."

The government has already given training to participants who are going to administer the vaccine. A total of 2360 participants have been trained during national level training. The state level training has been completed in all states and UTs.

Look at the list of dry centres:

• Delhi: Venkateshwara Hospital in South West district; Daryaganj dispensary in Central district; and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital in Shahdara
• Uttar Pradesh: Sahara Hospital, RML Hospital, King George's Medical University and SGPGI as well one centre each in Mall block and Malihabad block in Lucknow
• Jammu and Kashmir: UT administration has identified 9 hospitals in 3 districts Jammu, Srinagar and Kulgam
• Jharkhand: Ranchi, East Singhbhum, Chatra, Palamu and Pakur
• Gujarat: Dahod, Bhavnagar, Valsad and Anand districts
• Kerala: Thiruvananthapuram, Idukki, Wayanad and Palakkad districts
• Punjab: Government Medical College; Sadbhavna Hospital; and the Community Health Centre in Shatrana.
• Haryana: Three health care centres in Panchkula.
• Karnataka: Kamakshipalya Urban PHC (West Zone), Vidyapeetha Urban Primary Health Centre (South Zone), and Hargade PHC in Anekal that comes under the Bangalore Urban district.