India gears up to roll out Covid-19 vaccine on war footing

India is gearing up for the roll out of Covid-19 vaccine across the country and a dry run has been planned in four states to start from next week to assess the readiness of the planned activities. The training of vaccine administrators, who will play an important role in the process, has already been taken up across various states.

The two-day dry run activity will be held on December 28 and 29 in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat and Punjab. Each state will plan it in two districts and preferably in different session type settings covering five categories : district hospital, CHC/PHC, urban site, private health facility, rural outreach, etc. This, the health ministry says, will enable end-to-end mobilisation and testing of Covid-19 vaccination process (except the vaccine) and check the usage of Co-WIN in the field environment, the linkages between planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms.

This dry run will include activities from the necessary data entries in Co-WIN to vaccine receipt and allocation to deployment of team members, mock drill of session sites with test beneficiaries to reporting and evening meeting. This will also include testing for cold storage and transportation arrangements for Covid-19 vaccine, management of crowds at the session sites with proper physical distancing.

Detailed training modules have been developed for different categories of vaccine handlers and administrators including medical officers, vaccinators, alternate vaccinators, cold chain handlers, supervisors, data managers, ASHA coordinators and all others involved in the implementation process at different levels.

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<h3><strong>India’s active caseload has further slipped under three per cent on Friday, comprising merely 2.78% of the total cases. The trend of more daily recoveries than the daily cases has led to a continuous contraction of India’s Active Caseload which presently stands at 2,81,919 today. Continuing with the trend of the last 28 days, India has reported more daily recoveries than the daily new cases during the past 24 hours</strong></h3>
The training includes all operational aspects like organization of vaccination sessions, use of Co-WIN IT platform for management of the entire vaccination process, deployment of HR cold chain preparedness, management of adverse events, communications and intersectoral coordination, biomedical waste management, infection prevention protocols, etc.

As many as 2,360 participants were trained during national level training of trainers which comprised state immunization officers, cold chain officers, IEC officials, development partners etc. The state level trainings have been completed in all States/UTs with participation of more than 7000 district level trainees, except Lakshadweep which will conduct it on December 29.

Cascading down, 681 districts (49,604 trainees) have completed the training of medical officers on operational guidelines. Vaccination team training has been completed in 1399 out of 17831 blocks/ planning units.

To facilitate redressal of queries on COVID-19 vaccination and Co-WIN portal related queries, national 1075 and state 104 Helpline capacity has also been strengthened to address queries beyond their routine support.

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<h3><strong>India continues to have one of the lowest cases per million population in the world (7,352) much lower than many other countries of the Western Hemisphere. The global average of cases per million population is 9,931</strong></h3>
An important focus of the dry run will be on management of any possible adverse events following immunisation (AEFI). In addition, adherence and management of infection control practices at the session site, to prevent disease transmission. The mock drill will include concurrent monitoring and review at the block and district levels, and preparation of feedback to be shared with the state and union health
ministry.

The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration of Covid-19 (NEGVAC) has recommended three prioritised population groups including healthcare workers (about 1 crore), frontline workers (about 2 crore) and prioritized age group (about 27 crore).

As vaccines are temperature sensitive and need to be stored in specific temperature, the present cold chain system consisting of 85,634 equipment for storage of vaccines at about 28,947 cold chain points across the country will be used for the cold chain administration. The current cold chain is capable of storing additional quantities of Covid-19 vaccine required for the first three crore prioritised population, that is the health care workers and front line workers..