COVID-19 vaccine: Union Health Minister visits GTB hospital in Delhi to analyse dry run drill — pics

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan visited the Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) hospital in Delhi on Saturday (January 2) to review the dry run of administering the Coronavirus vaccine.

Harsh Vardhan took to Twitter and wrote: “#CoronaVaccine Preparation is complete. Now #vaccination Preparations must be tested before the start date is announced. For this @MoHFW_INDIA” (rough translation from Hindi).

“Starting today, Dry Run is running in 259 centers in 116 districts of the country. In this sequence, I reviewed Dry Run at GTB Hospital in Delhi,” he further wrote.

https://twitter.com/drharshvardhan/status/1345242265686405120

With the aim to prepare for the roll-out of Coronavirus vaccine across the nation, the dry run is set to be conducted by all the States and UT governments from Saturday onwards.

As per the Union Health Ministry, the objective of this dry run for COVID-19 vaccine introduction is to “assess operational feasibility in the use of COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) application in field environment, to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges and guide the way forward prior to actual implementation”.

The run is also presumed to give confidence to programme managers at various levels.

Meanwhile, few States will also include districts in difficult terrain/have poor logistical support. Places like Maharashtra and Kerala are all likely to schedule the dry run in major cities other than their Capital.