Coronavirus vaccination begins with the registration of 300 beneficiaries in Punjab.
Key sentence:
- The dry run began in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and also Gujarat, in addition to Punjab, keeping in mind their geographic locations.
- “On Tuesday, they will visit their designated sites for online verification.
On Monday, in Punjab’s Ludhiana as well as Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar districts, the two-day dry run of the Covid-19 vaccination rollout started with the successful registration of 300 patients on the Co-WIN application from the central government, the online platform for tracking the delivery of real-time vaccines.
No vaccine was involved in the mock drill phase, which was only intended to verify the viability of the program, which included monitoring via the app.
As Dr Rajesh Bhaskar stated:
The dry run began in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and also Gujarat, in addition to Punjab, keeping in mind their geographic locations.
Because of the spread of the virus in these districts, seven locations in Ludhiana, as well as five in SBS Nagar, are selected in Punjab for dry running. On the first day, 25 beneficiaries are called to each site for data entry mostly on the app, said Dr Rajesh Bhaskar, Punjab Covid-19 Punjab nodal officer.
Data of 300 beneficiaries were entered on the portal, with almost all of them receiving messages about active registration on their mobile phones. “On Tuesday, they will visit their designated sites for online verification. Once they get shots, their information will be submitted to the app to prevent any mistake or duplication, said the nodal officer.
Further Health Ministry stated:
The dry run exercise is to test the whole vaccine process as to how our cold chains can hit the end-user. “We will identify the challenges as well as shortcomings through it,” he said. In addition, the state health department has also claimed its readiness for transportation as well as storage of vaccines.
- Bhaskar about Vaccine storage and supply:
“In our state-level vaccine stores in Chandigarh and even in three regional stores in Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, and Ferozepur, we could store around one crore doses.
Besides, to guarantee the proper storage of the doses, the state has 729 cold storage points, 1,165 ice-lined refrigerators as well as 1,079 deep freezers. We are also fitted with vaccine vans to deliver the doses securely in each district,” stated Dr Bhaskar.
The state government expects to initially collect shots for nearly 1.5 lakh health staff (both government and private) who have been enrolled in the first step to obtaining the vaccine. For the vaccine launch, about 4,000 vaccinators have being prepared.
