District Collector V. Vinay Chand held a review meet with the officials on Friday to ensure implementation of the guidelines for the successful conduct of the COVID-19 vaccine trial run to be conducted in the district on Saturday.
The Government ENT Hospital, Pradhama Hospital and the Regional Health Centre at Simhachalam have been selected for the launch of the trial run.
A trial run was already conducted in four States in the country and in Krishna district in the State. With prospects looking bright for the vaccine being launched in India, the Central government has ordered conduct of dry runs.
The method of transport of the vaccine, storage of the vaccine at the place, where it would be administered to patients and security at the storage centres should be ensured.
Waiting facilities
He directed the officials to see that there were at least three rooms to provide waiting facilities to the public, administration of the vaccine and observation of the patients.
The present exercise would be a dry run and there would no administration of vaccine or injections. It was only a mock drill and the public should be informed in advance about it.
All the arrangements should be properly done just as in the case of polling booths in the general elections.
Disposal of biowaste
Only those whose names were registered in the list should be allowed at the vaccine centres. Only staff of the Medical and Health Department should be administered the vaccine. Those who were given the vaccine should be kept in the observation room for at least 30 minutes. An ambulance should be kept ready at the vaccine centre. The trial run would begin at 9 a.m. and measures should be taken to see that at least 25 persons were given the vaccine at each vaccine centre. Arrangements should also be made for the safe disposal of biowastes at the vaccine centres.
Once the actual vaccine was received, it would be first administered to health care workers followed by frontline workers like Revenue, Police Medical and Health, Municipal Staff and Anganwadi workers apart from workers of other departments, who have co-morbidities.
He directed the Revenue Divisional Officers to ensure that the Mandal Tahsildars properly understood the programme as the vaccination programme was likely to be conducted by taking each mandal as a unit.
According to the District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar, as per the protocol SMS will be sent to 25 recipients for each hospital in the dry run. Once they reach the designated hospital the police officer present will check the SMS and the data entry officials will match them with the details and send them to the vaccination room. Post vaccination they will be observed for 30 minutes and in case of any reaction they will be given basic medicines and sent to designated bigger hospitals such as KGH for further observation. All these protocols will be observed in the dry run, said Dr. Sudhakar.
GVMC Commissioner G. Srijana, Joint Collectors M. Venugopala Reddy and P. Arun Babu, Paderu ITDA PO S. Venkateswar, Narsipatnam Sub Collector N. Mourya, DRO A. Prasad, RDOs K. Penchala Kishore, Sitarama Rao and Lakshmi Sivajoythi, DM & HO Surya Narayana, DRDA PD V. Visweswara Rao and GVMC Medical Officer K.S.L.G. Sastry were among those who participated in the meeting.