What Is A Dry-run And How Does It Apply To COVID-19 Vaccination Programme?

The Covid-19 dummy vaccination drive, aimed at testing India’s vaccine delivery system and other logistics started on, Monday 28th December 2020.

The dry run, the largest mass immunisation programme in the country’s history is being administered in four states- Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, and Assam.

What is the Centre’s end-to-end dry run for Covid-19 vaccination?

A dry run may be a practice run or a testing process where the consequences of a possible failure are intentionally moderated. It is the entire testing of the system involving (mimicking/dummy-acting) all components of the method but is undertaken before delivery to the particular end-users.

For example like in January this year, Pune Metro completed its first trial train run in the city successfully on an elevated route in Pimpri. Any metro train route does not become operational abruptly. It is tested on all parameters.

Similarly, the vaccination programme of India, which can be one among the most important in the world is given the sheer size of the population, that must be checked for possible lapses within the management of any possible adverse events following immunisation, cold storage and transportation arrangements, and crowd management at session sites with proper physical distance etc.

“This exercise will enable end-to-end mobilisation and testing of Covid-19 vaccination process (except the vaccine) and check the usage of Co-WIN in-field environment, linkages between planning, implementation and reporting mechanisms, identify challenges and guide the way forward before actual implementation including improvements which will be required in the envisaged process,” the health ministry said in a statement.

What will be done in the Covid-19 vaccination dry run?

The dummy vaccination exercise are going to be administered in 2 districts each of 4 states at the 4 corners of the state — Andhra Pradesh , Gujarat, Punjab, and Assam.

In an operation that will be monitored closely by the central government, participants will go through 55 important SIMULATED steps:

1. Each district will receive the dummy vaccine for 100 beneficiaries from the nearest depot
2. The temperature will be tracked through the vaccine’s journey from the depot to the vaccination site
3. An SMS will be sent in advance to the beneficiaries with the name of the vaccinator, and the time of the vaccination
4. After simulating the administration of the vaccine, each beneficiary will be made to sit for 30 minutes
5. In case an adverse event occurs, its management will be tracked through the central server

In addition, infection control practices are going to be followed at the location to stop coronavirus transmission. All this may be monitored, observed and brought into consideration by the Central committee observing the dry-run