New Delhi: Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh is equipped to store around 8 lakh vials of Covid vaccines ahead of the official distribution of vaccine, said District Immunisation Officer (DIO) Dr Sermista Dio. Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh is one of the districts in the country, besides Punjab, Assam and Gujarat, where the dry run for the vaccination was conducted on Tuesday. In the district, as many as 125 beneficiaries—all the health workers employed in public health centres (PHCs) and hospitals—received dummy vaccines.
Dio told The Sunday Guardian, “A two-day training was conducted ahead of the dry run, and we have created a team of five members, consisting of doctors, nurses and others, to vaccinate the people. The district has a population of 47 lakh and at a time we can store around 8 lakh vials of vaccines in the district. Arrangements have been made in the district.”
She further said that the district health department has installed as many as nine large Iceland Refrigerators (ILR) in the district, and 14 ILRs in PHCs and hospitals. Moreover, the department is constructing nine more large ILRs in the district, and with the help of these ILRs will be able to store at least 8 lakh vials of vaccines—four each in PHCs, hospitals and at a central location in the district, she added. The ILRs can store vaccines between 2 degree Celsius and 8 degrees Celsius.
Dio told The Sunday Guardian that the health workers are well prepared to vaccinate people and have also concluded with the required training. She added, “The district medical officers in the state will act as mandal coordinators in order to look after the distribution of vaccines and also coordinate with the central team in the state.”
Dio also said that a minor defect was noticed in the Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) app during the dry run and it was reported to the team concerned. She said, “The app had developed minor defects such as the app was not calculating the age of beneficiaries, and it was also showing that a certain beneficiary had already been vaccinated when it was not the case.” The issue has been reported to the IT team and the team has assured to fix the problem.
The dry run was conducted in five different locations in the district, and 25 beneficiaries in each of these five locations received the dummy vaccines. The efficiency of logistics to transport the vaccines from Machilipatnam to cold chain store in Vijayawada was also tested during the dry run.