The Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare conducted a successful two-day dry run for COVID-19 vaccination in four states - Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat on 28th and 29th December 2020.

The two-day end-to-end dry run was undertaken in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.

The dry run exercise is aimed at end-to-end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process and will include planning & preparations as per the operational guidelines. It includes creation of facilities & users on Co-WIN application, session site creation & mapping of sites, Health Care Workers (HCW) data upload, receipt of vaccines and vaccine allocation by the district, session planning, deployment of vaccination team, logistics mobilization at session site, mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state level.

The objective of dry the run is also to undertake and confirm field implementation of IT platform Co-WIN and guide way forward prior to actual implementation.

District Collector with engagement of district and block task force were made responsible for conducting the dry run and it was expected to provide insights on any gaps or bottle-necks during actual conduct of vaccination. Specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administration and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary’s data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators & beneficiaries, beneficiary mobilization were carried out.

All states expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and use of IT platforms to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes expected to cover a large number of people across the country. Additional suggestions on the IT platform were also noted for further enhancement of the Co-WIN platform. Detailed insights and feedback so obtained will help enrich the operational guidelines and IT platform and will strengthen the COVID-19 vaccination roll out plan.