COVID-19 vaccine dry run to continue in Assam till actual dose arrives: Official

GUWAHATI: In order to prepare the medical staff and infrastructure, the dry run for the COVID-19 vaccine will continue regularly across Assam till actual vaccination takes place, a senior official said on Saturday.

Talking to PTI, National Health Mission (NHM) Mission Director Lakshmanan S said the Health Department does not want to leave any stone unturned to find out any lacuna in the system before administering the vaccine to the people of the state.

"Today, we are having the dry run at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, Sonapur Civil Hospital and Khanapara State Dispensary. This is going to be a continuous process and we will be having dry runs till the actual vaccine comes to us," he added.


The senior official said the NHM and the state Health Department in the ongoing exercise of dry runs across the state will attempt to cover as much health centres and hospitals as possible in coming days.

"Our objective is to prepare our staff, upgrade the state machinery and improve the vaccine delivery infrastructure. We don't want the people to have any issue when the actual vaccine will be administered. These dry runs will help find the shortcomings and plug those," Lakshmanan said.

Along with Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab, dry run for COVID-19 vaccine in Assam began on December 28 in Nalbari and Sonitpur districts.

The dry runs at five health centres in each of these two districts continued on the next day also and all senior officials monitored the exercise personally.

As part of the exercise, the list of beneficiaries of the vaccination was uploaded and a mock exercise for the vaccine was conducted in all the centres.

The state Surveillance Medical Officer of the World Health Organisation (WHO) visited many centres and discussed the issues related to the vaccination with the health officials and the district administrations.