Vaccination drive: Dry run in all Punjab districts today

CHANDIGARH: Ahead of the Covid-19 vaccine roll out, second dry run will be conducted in all the districts of Punjab on Friday to ensure seamless last-mile delivery of the vaccine when it is made available.
The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has accorded approval to two coronavirus vaccines for restricted use. The Union government is expecting to roll out the vaccine drive from mid-January. The first dry run was conducted in two districts on December 28 and 29.
Sharing the details, Punjab Covid-19 nodal officer Dr Rajesh Bhaskar said the drive would be conducted on three sites — district hospital, private health facility and health centre in rural area — in each district. All the activities, starting from beneficiary data upload, session site allocation, session site management to reporting and debriefing would be covered in the dry run.
The state government was aiming to provide vaccine dose to a target population of about 70 lakh in a phased manner. Health workers — doctors, medical students, nurses, paramedic staff, and Asha units — will be first to be immunised. These will be followed by frontline workers engaged in delivery of essential services such as police, the revenue department officials and municipal workers, who have been further classified as sanitation workers in Covid care centre, waste collector, sweeper, waste processing plant operators, urban local bodies staff, cremation ground staff, maintenance staff and miscellaneous staff. All people above 50 will be vaccinated in the third phase, followed by all people below 50 with comorbidities as on January 1, 2021.
Punjab has identified 1.60 lakh health workers to receive the first dose of the vaccine, while the estimated number of frontline workers of different departments is around 3 lakh.
Dry run done in all Haryana districts
Haryana health department on Thursday conducted a dry run of the Covid-19 vaccine roll out in all 22 districts, in which 3,300 beneficiaries were included and 132 sessions held at six identified sites (3 urban, including slum, and 3 rural sites) in each district. Several end-to-end activities like identification of vaccinators and supervisors, session sites with PIN code tagging, sending messages to beneficiaries for vaccination were smoothly conducted during this dry run. Additional chief secretary (health) Rajeev Arora said the dry run was closely monitored and at one of the sites in rural areas of Gurugram district, World Health Organization country head (India), Dr Roderico H Ofrin was present.
The dry run is being conducted as part of preparations for a successful roll out of the massive vaccination campaign and to identify any bottlenecks or glitches in operational and technical aspects of implementation.
6 deaths, 274 cases in Haryana
Haryana registered 274 Covid-19 positive cases and six deaths due to the deadly virus on Thursday, raising the number of cases in the state to 2,64,161 and deaths to 2,940. The state still has 2,563 active cases, despite 2,58,658 people having been discharged after treatment. The recovery rate in the state is 97.92% and the doubling rate 96 days. As far as sampling is concerned, 47,20,441 people have been tested till date. As many as 106 persons are currently on oxygen support and 11 are on ventilators.
10 deaths, 284 cases in Punjab
Punjab reported 284 fresh cases while the virus claimed 10 lives on Thursday. Ferozepur recorded three deaths while one person each died in Barnala, Bathinda, Fazilka, Ropar, Jalandhar, Tarn Taran and Mohali. 59 were tested positive in Mohali, 42 in Bathinda, 30 in Ludhiana, 28 in Patiala, 24 in Jalandhar, 17 Amritsar, 16 in Hoshiarpur, 11 in Gurdaspur, 10 in Kapurthala, nine in Faridkot, six in Pathankot, four each in Fazilka, Fatehgarh Sahib and Barnala, three in Mansa, two each in Ferozepur, Moga and Sangrur and one in Muktsar.