Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare has been nominated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) as a member on the GAVI Board. He will be representing the South East Area Regional Office (SEARO)/ Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) constituency on the GAVI Board. The seat is currently held by  MyintHtwe of Myanmar. Dr. Harsh Vardhan will be representing India from 1stJanuary 2021 until 31st December 2023.

The Board normally meets twice a year in June and November/ Decemberand holds an annual retreat, normally in March or April. All these meetings arenormally attended in person.

The GAVI Board is responsible for strategic direction and policy-making, oversees the operations of the Vaccine Alliance and monitors programme implementation. With membership drawn from a range of partner organisations, as well as experts from the private sector, the Board provides a forum for balanced strategic decision making, innovation and partner collaboration.

GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance as part of its mission to save lives, reduce poverty and protect the world against the threat of epidemics, has helped vaccinate more than 822 million children in the world’s poorest countries, preventing more than 14 million future deaths.

Meanwhile, Union Healthy Ministry successfully conducted dry run for COVID-19 Vaccination in Four states Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat on 28th and 29th December 2020. The two-day end-to-end dry run was undertaken in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.

The dry run exercise is aimed at end-to-end testing of COVID-19 vaccination process and will include planning & preparations as per the Operational Guidelines; creation of facilities & users on Co-WIN application, session site creation & mapping of sites, Health Care Workers (HCW) data upload, receipt of vaccines and vaccine allocation by the district, session planning, deployment of vaccination team, logistics mobilization at session site, mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state level. The objective of dry the run is also to undertake and confirm field implementation of IT platform Co-WIN and guide way forward prior to actual implementation.

District Collector with engagement of district and block task force were made responsible for conducting the dry run and it was expected to provide insights on any gaps or bottle-necks during actual conduct of vaccination.

Specific teams were formed for various tasks by the district administration and activities like uploading of dummy beneficiary’s data, session site creation, vaccine allocation, communication vaccination details to vaccinators& beneficiaries, beneficiary mobilization were carried out.

Field feedback on the first day of dun run was also reviewed on 29th Dec 2020 through Video conferencing with State & District Programme officers by Joint Secretary (Public Health). All states expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and use of IT platform to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes expected to cover a large number of people across the country. Detailed insights and feedback so obtained will help enrich the operational guidelines and IT platform and will strengthen the Covid-19 vaccination roll out plan.