The central government has introduced a new digital platform called ‘CO-WIN’ for COVID-19 vaccine delivery. There will be a new mobile app as well with the same name that will allow people to register for the vaccine.
The app will have separate modules for administrator, registration, vaccination, beneficiary acknowledgement and reports. Once people start to register for the app, the platform will upload bulk data on co-morbidity provided by local authorities.
The CO-WIN app is yet to be available for smartphone users and it is expected that it will be publicly available soon.
Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, briefed in detail about the Government’s preparation for COVID Vaccination drive. Some vaccine candidates which are in different stages of trial may get licensed in the next few weeks, he further said.
“Every single India who needs to be vaccinated will be vaccinated, which roughly includes one crore healthcare workers, two crore frontline workers and 27 crore of prioritised age groups,” said Rajesh Bhushan .
“It is to be noted that the government will take a final call on this and these stages may not be sequential. Depending on the availability of the vaccines, these can go on simultaneously,” he added.
Speaking about the steps taken by the Union Government for rolling out COVID-19 vaccine, Rajesh Bhushan said, “When such a huge vaccination drive is taken up, it becomes necessary to have institutional mechanisms at the level of States, Districts and Blocks that will inspect and supervise the entire process.
This app will be useful for all those engaged in the process — administrators, vaccinators and people who are going to receive the vaccine.
The government will be vaccinating frontline workers including all healthcare professionals in the first stage and emergency workers in the second stage, the data of these people are already being compiled by the state governments.
From the third stage onwards people will be given vaccines, self-registration will be introduced, all this will be through the Co-WIN app.
There are five modules in Co-WIN app: Administrator module, registration module, vaccination module, beneficiary acknowledgement module and report module. Reports said each vaccination will take at least 30minutes and only 100 people will be administered in each session.
The different modules of the digital platform, COVID-19 vaccination app starts from registration to verification.
- The administrator module is for the administrators who will be conducting these vaccination sessions.
- Registration module is for people to get registered for vaccination. It will upload bulk data on co-morbidity provided by local authorities or by surveyors.
- The vaccination module will verify beneficiary details.
- Beneficiary acknowledgement module will send SMS to beneficiaries. It will also generate QR-based certificates after one gets vaccinated.
- Report module will prepare reports of how many vaccine sessions have been conducted, how many people have attended those, how many people have dropped out etc.
- The mobile app will also send real-time data of the temperature of the cold-storage units to the main server.
The PM has also personally interacted with and encouraged all vaccine manufacturers and scientists, he added. Five of them, namely Covishield manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, Covaxin manufactured by Bharat Biotech, ZyKoV-D manufactured by Zydus Cadila, Sputnik V which is being manufactured by Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories and NVX-CoV2373 which is another vaccine by SII are in various stages of Clinical Trial. Out of these, Covishield and Covaxin have also applied for Emergency Use Authorization. This apart, a Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine by Biological E Ltd, mRNA based HGCO 19 vaccine by Genova, Pune; and an Inactivated rabies vector platform vaccine by Bharat Biotech are in various stages of pre-clinical trial. Vaccine requires 2-3 doses in intervals of 3 to 4 weeks, further informed the Health Secretary. He, however, also cautioned that precautions must be undertaken even after vaccination.
Rajesh Bhushan also informed that maximum active cases are in Maharashtra, followed by Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal and Delhi. These five states contribute 54% of total active cases in the country.
