COIMBATORE: Coimbatore has been included in the nationwide trial run for mass
Covid-19 vaccination on Saturday. The trial run will be conducted in five centres and will include 125 beneficiaries.
The beneficiaries will not be given an injection since the vaccine is expected to arrive only by January-end. The trial run is mainly to check for any issues in the COWIN app, which must issue a certificate to the beneficiary after the vaccine, and to check how efficiently the vaccination teams store and administer the shots.
The trial run that will begin at 10 am on Saturday will be conducted at ESI Hospital, PSG Hospital, Sulur GH, SLM Home Urban PHC in Brookebond Road and
Bouluvampatti community health centre.While PSG is the only private hospital, Bouluvampatti is the only rural location chosen. “Each centre will have 25 frontline health workers, randomly chosen from the beneficiary list, who will come to the assigned location for the trial,” said deputy director of public health Dr G Ramesh Kumar.
The 25 people were asked to line up outside the building, chosen to be the vaccination booth, in each centre. Each centre will be assigned a team of five officers, including a doctor, staff nurse, computer operator, police officer for security and a village health nurse or an urban health nurse.
“The beneficiary will first be allowed in by the police officer, after showing their id and address proof and only if their name is on the list of beneficiaries. The nurse will administer the vaccine, the computer operator will enter their details on the COWIN app and issue the certificate after which the patient will be led into an observation room, where they will be observed by a VHN for 30 minutes for any allergic reactions,” said another health officer
Dr Bharani Kumar.
The vaccination norms specify that each session in each location, during the real administration, should have only 100 beneficiaries.
“We have created seating facilities outside the booth, checked for efficiency of cold storage in them and an enclosure for observation,” said Dr Bharani Kumar.
The nationwide trial run was initially supposed to include only capitals of states in the country and thus only Chennai. But on Friday afternoon, other districts like Coimbatore and Trichy were asked to join. Almost 60% of the district’s cold storage points have been connected to Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (EVIN). “Work to connect the remaining 40% of the storages are on, so we can monitor the temperatures from anywhere,” said Dr Kumar.