Dry run conducted successfully in 31 districts in Karnataka

Dry run, an exercise for end-to-end testing of the COVID-19 vaccination process, was conducted "successfully" in 281 facilities of 31 districts of Karnataka, and the state is ready for the actual vaccination whenever the vaccine arrives, the health department said on Friday.

The 281 facilities where the dry run was conducted include eight in the city civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike limits.

According to the state health department, Deputy Chief Minister C N Ashwath Narayan visited the district hospital in Ramanagara and observed the dry run activities, while Health Minister K Sudhakar visited Aster CMI hospital at Yelahanka in Bengaluru and the District hospital in Chikkaballapura.

Sudhakar, after visiting the dry run facilities, said the arrangements and preparedness were quite good and the process was being followed as per the guidelines issued.

Several MLAs, including Kumar Bangarappa (Soraba), MP Kumaraswamy (Mudigere), Suresh (Tarikere) visited dry run facilities in their constituencies and observed the activities.

Senior health department officials and Deputy Commissioners of various districts personally supervised the dry run sites, it said.

It said after the successful completion of dry run in all the districts, the state is ready for the actual COVID-19 vaccination whenever the vaccine arrives.

Sudhakar had earlier in the day said Karnataka expects to receive 13,90,000 vials of vaccine against COVID-19 in a day or two and it is likely to be administered from January 11.

The vaccination will first be administered to health care workers and 6.30 lakh health care professionals have registered in Karnataka till date, he said Health workers will be followed by those with co morbidities, those aged above 60 and in other departments like Police and Revenue working against COVID-19, he added.

The first round of the dry run was held in five districts of Karnataka- Bengaluru (including BBMP), Belagavi, Kalburgi, Mysore and Shivamogga- on December 2 as per the government of India guidelines.