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Agencies

COVID vaccination: India to conduct second dry run in all districts on January 8
07-January-2021

India will conduct a second dry run of COVID-19 vaccination in all districts of the country on January 8, days ahead of the government's planned date for vaccine rollout.

At a press briefing, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan had on Tuesday announced that the government was prepared to roll out the vaccine within about a week.

"Based on the feedback from the dry-run of vaccination drive, the health ministry is ready to introduce COVID-19 vaccine within 10 days from the date of emergency use authorisation," Bhushan said. He, however, said the final decision will be taken by the government.

On Sunday, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had approved Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield and indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech for restricted emergency use in the country.

A dry run was conducted on Saturday in almost all states and union territories to assess their ability and readiness to administer COVID-19 shots to hundreds of millions of people. This is aimed at equipping the entire administration and management of vaccine supply, storage and logistics, including cold chain management.

On December 28 and 29, the first dry run was conducted in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar district of Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar of Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts of Assam.

The Central government plans to vaccinate nearly 30 crore people in the first phase of drive. It will be offered to one crore healthcare workers, along with 2 crore frontline and essential workers and 27 crore elderly, mostly above the age of 50 years with co-morbidities.