In a massive country-wide exercise in India’s fight against COVID-19, a two-day COVID-19 mock drill was conducted successfully at 35 States/UTs across 724 districts.

Amidst a gradual spike in COVID-19 cases in several states, the Union Health Ministry had written to States and UTs on 28th March, 2023 to conduct mock drills on 10th and 11th April, 2023 across all health facilities, including COVID dedicated healthcare facilities to evaluate their level of preparedness, in terms of equipment, procedure and manpower.

On 7th April 2023, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya had chaired a meeting with State Health Ministers and urged them to conduct mock drills of all health facilities and requested them to review preparedness with District Administration and Public Health Officials.

The mock drills were subsequently undertaken on 10th and 11th April, 2023 in a total of 33,685 health facilities, including 28,050 govt. facilities and 5,635 private health facilities. The Govt facilities included Govt. Medical Colleges, Govt Hospitals, District/Civil Hospitals, CHCs as well as HWCs and PHCs while Private health facilities included Private Medical Colleges, Private Hospitals and other private health centres.

Critical medical infrastructure and resources including oxygen beds, isolation beds, ventilators, PSA plants, LMO, Oxygen concentrators, Oxygen cylinders as well as medicines and PPE kits were assessed and medical staff were oriented on management of COVID-19 during the drills.

In preparation of the nationwide mock drill, online training with State and District Surveillance Units were also conducted on 4th, 5th and 6th April 2023. These trainings focused on the role to be played by State and District Surveillance Units, data fields to be updated, type of facilities to be covered and details of helpline for States/UTs facing any difficulty on feeding data on COVID-19 India Portal. A total of 1544 participants took part in the preparatory training.