Assam Prepared For Vaccination Since September, Dry Run In 33 Districts

Among one of the best performing states in the country for COVID-19 management, Assam is all set for rolling out trails and actual inoculation of health staff in both public and private medical facilities.

The state has been preparing COVID-19 vaccination plan since September to cover 1.75 lakh frontline medical staff. Assam had been setting up cold chains for vaccine for the last four months, officials said.

"For months we are prepared. In fact we started the build-up for vaccination since September and now we have several storage facilities. We have developed a central storage facility in Guwahati, apart from regional vaccine storages in five strategic locations in the state," Assam Health Secretary Samir Sinha told NDTV.

"We have local vaccine storage with modern refrigeration in 27 districts, in all we have 23 cold chain points," he said.

Assam has trained close to 9,000 vaccinators and 1,700 supervisors. "Assam has 1.75 lakh healthcare workers. They are the primary lot going to be inoculated in the first phase vaccination," Mr Sinha added.

A dry run of vaccination was conducted at Kamrup Metro, Nalbari and Sonitpur districts. The upcoming dry run will cover all 33 districts.

The dry run will be conducted at three health institutes in each district. A total of 25 beneficiaries will be invited to each centre, officials added.

Apart from the dry run, a three-day training for health workers started on Thursday, covering 12,000 nurses.

So far, 1.75 lakh frontline health staff including ASHA and anganwadi workers have registered themselves for COVID-19 vaccination, officials said.

"Once we roll out dry run in all the 33 districts, we will check if there is any communication issues, connectivity issues needs to be tested since we have remote areas in the states including riverine areas, hills, tea gardens, so the focus is not to find shortcomings since our infrastructure and training is ready," Mr Sinha said.