Joining the rest of the country, a dry run for COVID 19 vaccination was conducted in 3 sites at Dimapur on 2nd January 2021, at District hospital Dimapur, CHC Medziphema and Urban PHC Duncan Bosti Dimapur. The exercise was conducted all over the country and for Nagaland, Dimapur was selected for the dry run.

At Dimapur, session sites were set up as per the guidelines given by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, consisting of 3 rooms i.e. waiting, vaccination and observation rooms. Each vaccination team consisted of 5 members each comprising of vaccinator officer and addition of 4 vaccination officers for verification, mobilising for vaccination, for portal uploading and for observation. During the dry run held, 25 beneficiaries were selected in each session site for conducting the proposed activity.

The dry run conducted at Dimapur was supervised by officials from State and District level comprising of Mission Director NHM, Deputy Commissioner Dimapur, State Immunization Officer, other administrative officers, CMO team and officials from medical and other departments.

Debriefing of the activity held was done in CMO Dimapur office at district level headed by the Mission Director NHM. The dry run at Dimapur was successfully carried out.

The objective of the dry run for COVID 19 vaccination is to assess operational feasibility in the use of Co-WIN application in a field environment and also for assessing the preparedness for the vaccination drive as and when it becomes available.

As and when the vaccine is rolled out, the first phase will cover health care workers, 2nd phase will cover the frontline workers’ while the 3rd phase will cover several populations above 50 years of age and persons with co-morbidities including children.