Ahead of the roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine in a few days, another dry-run will be conducted across the country on January 8.
On January 2, almost all states and Union Territory conducted a dry run at 285 session sites spread across 125 districts to assess the ability and readiness of authorities to administer shots to hundreds of millions of people, including many in remote corners of the country.
It was conducted to test the end-to-end planned operations and the mechanism that has been set up to ensure smooth conduct of the Covid-19 vaccination.
On December 28 and 29, the first dry run was conducted in the 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 the drive. It will be offered to one crore healthcare workers, along with 2 crore frontline and essential workers and 27 crores elderly, mostly above the age of 50 years with co-morbidities.
The Health Ministry on Tuesday announced that the vaccination drive will be rolled out by January 13.
