CHENNAI: The nationwide
dry run for the first stage of Covid-19
vaccination campaign will take place in five districts in the state on Saturday. Replicating every step of the real vaccination drive to check preparedness, it would be conducted at 17 locations in Chennai, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, the Nilgiris and Tiruvallur. The locations include Rajiv Gandhi Government GH in Chennai, ESI Hospital in Coimbatore and Ooty Medical College Hospital besides primary health centres in corporation and rural areas. The first phase of vaccination drive aims to vaccinate more than five lakh health workers.
The aim of the dry run is to check the multiple steps of the vaccination drive like assembling beneficiaries, checking identity, administering vaccine shots, recording data and observing them for 30 minutes. It would also check the time taken to vaccinate a person as well as the ease of using the CoWIN app, which will issue a certificate to the vaccinated person.
“Each of the 17 centres will have a vaccination team consisting of five people – a doctor, a staff nurse, a village health or urban health nurse, a computer operator who will also handle CoWin app and one more member,” said health secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan. Health officials will check if the vaccination booths have proper entrance and exit, waiting area, cold storage facilities and separate enclosure for people to wait after vaccination for observation.
“We have trained more than 21,000 workers to give the vaccine safely without violating cold chain or administration protocol,” said health minister Dr C Vijayabaskar.
The directorate of public health will also test if it can send messages to the health worker’s phone on the time they should be at the site and the follow-up date and time for booster dose.
Until now, the directorate has a list of 3.5 lakh doctors, nurses and paramedical staff from private and government hospitals from across the state. However, the public health department is yet to prepare the final list as several private hospitals are yet to furnish details of their staff for vaccination.
In Trichy, the public health department set the final deadline of January 4 for them to furnish the details. “If the private hospitals do not provide the details, their frontline workers will be excluded from the vaccination drive,” deputy director of health services (DDHS), Trichy Dr A Subramani told TOI. Of 1,389 private hospitals in Trichy, only 372 submitted the details to health department.
In
Madurai and Coimbatore too there has been a delay on the part of private hospitals in submitting details of the frontline workers for vaccination, though government hospitals have furnished the required details. A health official said only about 30% of private hospitals have submitted the details so far in Madurai.
State health officials expect at least another 1.5 lakh health workers to register for the vaccine. “Vaccination schedules will be announced once we get the go ahead and stock from the centre. Since the first phase is for doctors, nurses and paramedics there is reasonable awareness,” said director of public health Dr T S Selvavinayagam.
After health workers, the state will vaccinate other frontline workers such as police, armed forces, home guard and disaster management staff. “We are also asking districts to be ready with the names and details of citizens above 50 years and people with comorbidities, so that they can be prioritised in second phase,” he said. Health department has vaccine storage points at 2,665 places, including PHCs, private medical colleges and cantonment hospitals.