BHUBANESWAR: The dry run for the administration of the Covid-19 vaccine was held successfully in all the 30 districts of the state on Saturday.
The mock drill of the vaccination programme, which was held across the country, is aimed at ensuring the smooth management of the process and to find out gaps in the training of healthcare staff and logistics.
Additional chief secretary (health) P K Mohapatra said, “Odisha is the first state to conduct the dry run in all 30 districts. We are fully prepared for the Covid-19 vaccination programme as we did not face any problem during the dry run.”
With India’s top drug regulator already having given its green signal to a Covid-19 vaccine, Mohapatra said the state government is expecting the vaccine to arrive by the end of this month. “The existing cold chain will be sufficient for administering the vaccine that has been approved by the regulatory authority. The infrastructure required for general vaccination will be sufficient for the Covid-19 vaccine too,” he pointed out.
The IT-enabled rehearsal of the vaccination process started through the CoWIN web portal at 10 am and continued for two hours. At the site of each session, five vaccinators were engaged in administering the vaccine to 25 health workers.
Each recipient of the vaccine had to produce a proof of identity before entering the vaccine centre. After verification, the vaccine was administered and the person who received the shot was shifted to an adjacent rest room for observation where they were allowed to stay for 30 minutes to check any adverse reaction or side effect.
“Since we received a dummy vaccine, we cannot know if there was any side effect of the medicine. Otherwise the whole process went off smoothly,” Suchismita Nayak, a recipient, said.
“Odisha has 1,222 cold chain points across the state, which are well-equipped for administering the Covid-19 vaccine. So far, 3.27 lakh health workers in the state have already registered themselves to receive the Covid-19 vaccine in the first phase. During the vaccination at each session site, 100 persons will be administered the vaccine in a single day. Since it is an IT-enabled programme, internet connectivity is key for the success of the programme. We checked all points and found no hiccups in the system,” director of health, Bijay Panigrahy, said.