Coronavirus vaccination dry run starts in Punjab with registration of 300 beneficiaries

The two-day dry run of the Covid-19 vaccination rollout began in Punjab’s Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar districts on Monday with the successful registration of 300 beneficiaries on the central government’s Co-WIN application, the online portal for monitoring the real-time vaccine delivery.

There was no vaccine involved in the mock drill process, which only aimed at checking the feasibility of the programme involving monitoring through the app.

Besides Punjab, the dry run started in Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat keeping in view their geographical locations.

“Seven locations in Ludhiana and five in SBS Nagar were selected in Punjab for the dry run due to the spread of the virus in these districts. On the first day, 25 beneficiaries were called to each site to make data entry on the app,” said Punjab Covid-19 Punjab nodal officer Dr Rajesh Bhaskar.

The data of 300 beneficiaries was entered on the portal with all of them receiving messages on their mobile phones about the successful registration. “They will visit their assigned sites for online verification on Tuesday. Once they get shots, their details will be uploaded on the app to avoid any miss or repetition,” the nodal officer said.

“The dry run exercise is to assess the entire vaccination process as how it will reach the end-user through our cold chains. Through it, we will identify the challenges and shortcomings,” he added.

Besides, the state health department has claimed its readiness for vaccine transportation and storage.

“We can store over 1 crore doses in our state-level vaccine store in Chandigarh and three regional stores in Amritsar, Hoshiarpur and Ferozepur. Besides, the state has 729 cold chain points, 1,165 ice-lined refrigerators and 1,079 deep freezers to ensure the proper storage of the doses. Also, we are equipped with vaccine vans to transport the doses in each district safely”, Dr Bhaskar added.

The state government is expecting to receive shots initially for nearly 1.5 lakh health workers (government as well as private) who have got registered for getting the vaccine in the first phase.

About 4,000 vaccinators are being trained for the vaccine rollout.

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