Andhra gears up for two-day vaccination dry run in Krishna

Hyderabad: A dry run for Covid-19 vaccination will be conducted in Andhra Pradesh’s Krishna district on 28th and 29th of December. 

Andhra Pradesh is among the four states chosen by the Centre for the vaccination dry run. The dry run has been planned for five places in the district: Government General Hospital, Vijayawada, Uppuluru primary health centre, Purna Heart Institute, Penamaluru primary health centre, and Prakash Nagar eUPHC. The dry run is aimed at testing the planned operations and the mechanisms laid out for Covid-19 vaccination in the state. It will provide insights on any gaps or bottlenecks so that they can be addressed before the commencement of the actual vaccination drive. 

Session planning, vaccinator deployment, deployment of team members, vaccine and logistics mobilization at session site, mock drill of beneficiary vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state and providing feedback to guide actions are among the activities planned. The dry run is also aimed at providing hands-on experience to programme managers at various levels. This will also test cold storage and transport arrangements made for distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, apart from other issues like management of crowds. The collector of Krishna district, Imitaz, supervised all the arrangements for the dry run.

“The dry run, which is a sort of dummy vaccination programme, is aimed at testing the planned operations and the laid-out mechanisms for Covid-19 vaccination in the state. Nobody will be given any vaccine but it would help the selected beneficiaries to understand the whole process of vaccination,” State Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar said.

“The state task force will review the feedback to guide further actions and send it to the Union Health Ministry,” he said during the training programme for team members identified for conducting the dry run.