Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma today informed that the dry run for administering Covid 19 vaccine would be held at seven locations of district Ludhiana on December 28 and 29, 2020. He said that for the first phase, Ludhiana district has been one of the two districts (other being Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar) chosen by the government for administering the Covid 19 vaccine in Punjab.A meeting in this regard was chaired by Deputy Commissioner Mr Varinder Kumar Sharma at Bachat Bhawan, here today. He was also accompanied by Commissioner of Police Mr Rakesh Agrawal, Joint CP Mr J Elanchezhian, ADC (D) Mr Sandeep Kumar, ADC Jagraon Mrs Neeru Katyal Gupta, ADC General Mr Amarjit Bains, Civil Surgeon Dr Rajesh Kumar Bagga, all SDMs and other senior officials of District Administration.Mr Varinder Kumar Sharma informed that in district Ludhiana, the dry run would be conducted at 7 locations (one in each sub division) namely Civil Hospital Ludhiana, Dayanand Medical College & Hospital, Raikot, Jagraon, Machhiwara, Khanna and Payal.He said that this activity is aimed at testing the laid out mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccination roll-out in the health system. He said that the dry run will exercise end to end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process and will vaccinate pre-identified beneficiaries from specified groups supported by Co-WIN, an electronic application.
The primary objective of the dry run included assessing the operational feasibility of using Co-WIN application in the field environment and to test linkages between planning. Implementation and reporting mechanisms would identify challenges and guideway forward prior to actual implementation.The Deputy Commissioner informed that in the first phase, more than 30,000 healthcare workers (both government and private) of district Ludhiana, who have registered themselves on the government portal, would be administered the Covid 19 vaccine, followed by Aanganwari workers, people aged above 50 years, people below 50 years with comorbidities, and others.He clarified that this vaccine would not be available off the shelf for the time being and only people who have got themselves registered on the government portal would be covered under it. He said that upon registration, the beneficiaries would receive an SMS informing about the date and place where the Covid 19 vaccine would be administered to them.He informed that initially, the dry run is proposed to be conducted in four states, namely Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Gujarat. He said that the immunisation partners, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), would support this dry run activity.