India's second Covid-19 vaccine dry run begins today

The national dry run is taking place in all districts of 36 states and union territories, barring Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, in the country.

Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan on Friday visited a hospital in Chennai to review the dry run.

Dr. Vardhan said, "In a short time, India has done well by developing vaccines. In the next few days, in the near future, we should be able to give these vaccines to our countrymen. It will be given to our healthcare professional followed by frontline workers."

"On January 2nd, we did a dry run in almost 125 districts in the country and today, we are doing it across the country except the three states who did it earlier," he added.

The first large scale dry-run was conducted in all states and UTs on Jan 2 with an objective to test operational feasibility of the use of CoWIN app, assess the linkage between planning and  implementation as well as to identify challenges before actual implementation.

The second exercise is an attempt to check the best way to vaccinate people against Covid-19 and find out loopholes in logistics and training.

The day-long drive on Friday will again test the operational feasibility of CoWIN application in a field environment.

Short for Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network, CoWIN is a digital platform to roll out and scale up the vaccination drive.

The Centre on Tuesday informed that Covid-19 vaccines will be ready for rollout in 10 days from the emergency use authorisation date based on feedback from the dry run.

Two Covid-19 vaccine candidates- Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and the Serum Institute of India's Covishield- on Sunday received the approval of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for an emergency use in India.

The announcement by the Centre came as a relief amid growing fears over the spread of the mutant strain of Coronavirus, that was first detected in the UK and is up to 70 per cent more infectious.