A nationwide dry run for Covid-19 vaccination was conducted today. The exercise was aimed at testing the preparedness for the vaccine rollout.

The objective was to assess operational feasibility in the use of Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) application in field environment, to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges and guide way forward prior to actual implementation.

Ahead of the actual vaccination drive, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare conducted a nationwide mock drill at 285 session sites to test the end-to-end planned operations and the mechanism that has been set up to ensure smooth conduct of the COVID19 vaccination that is expected to begin soon.

This dry run of the vaccination drive spread across 125 districts is covering all States and UTs having adequate representation of urban and rural districts along with hard-to-reach areas. Each State and Union Territory was asked to conduct the dry run at minimum three session sites.

AIR correspondent reports, the mock drill conducted today will ensure that phase 1 of Covid-19 vaccination goes without any glitch.

It was aimed at testing linkages between planning and implementation and identifying the challenges. It was also designed to test Co-WIN application, developed specifically for Covid-19 vaccination drive, in a field environment.

The cold storage and transportation arrangements for the COVID 19 vaccine, management of crowd, and deployment of team members were also tested during the mock drill.

A two-day trial run was earlier conducted on December 28 and 29 in four states – Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat.

The vaccines would be administered free of cost to priority groups in the first phase on India’s inoculation drive. This includes one crore healthcare workers and two crore frontline workers.