5 districts in Karnataka chosen for COVID-19 vaccination dry run

Bengaluru, Dec 31: The nation-wide dry run for COVID-19 vaccination will be held in five districts in Karnataka on January 2, the state government said on Thursday. It will be carried out in Bengaluru Urban, Belagavi, Kalaburagi, Mysuru and Shivamogga, an official statement said.

In view of COVID 19 vaccine introduction, the Centre has planned vaccination of healthcare workers and frontline workers as the initial priority groups. All the healthcare workers from government and private facilities have already been enlisted and their details uploaded as per the Centre's instructions, it said.

In Karnataka, in each district, three session sites -- one each at district, taluk and primary health centre levels have been chosen for the dry run. After the dry run, feedback will be collected from those session sites of each district, the government said.

The dry run will be an exercise for end-to-end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process such as planning and preparations, officials said. The primary objective of the dry run exercise is to assess the operational feasibility of using CoWIN application in a field environment.