As India gears up for COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, Centre guides States, UTs on Co-WIN management

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Sunday held a video conferencing with administrators from States and UTs on the CoWIN software which is essential for the last-mile vaccine administration.The MoHFW said in a statement that the meeting was chaired by Ram Sewak Sharma, Chairman of Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to combat COVID-19 and member, National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration of COVID-19.

During the meeting, RS Sharma pointed out that it is extremely important to clearly identify the person who is getting vaccinated and keep a digital record on who gets vaccinated by whom, when and which vaccine. He also advised the States and UTs that the data collection should meet the purpose of facilitating work and that needs to be validated at the field levels.

Addressing the participants, RS Sharma stated that the process should be citizen-centric and built on the approach that the vaccine shall be available anytime and anywhere. He stressed on the need to be flexible without compromising on quality. He reiterated that the inclusivity, speed and scalability have been kept in mind while designing the unique digital platform with all components being portable, synchronous without excessive and unnecessary dependencies.

The EG Chairperson underscored the critical importance of capturing the vaccination data in real-time, stating that this was non-negotiable; while the posting of data on the portal may be online or offline in view of connectivity issues being highlighted by few states.

He also critically highlighted the caution one needs to exercise to ensure that there are 'no proxies' at all; the beneficiaries need to be uniquely and undeniably identified, he strongly reiterated. Speaking on the use of Aadhar platform, he advised the States to urge the beneficiaries to seed their current mobile number with Aadhar for registration and consequent communication through SMS; there cannot be any proxies for Aadhar authentication.

There was a detailed and comprehensive discussion on the experience of the States/UTs. Their feedback and the consequent changes in software/protocols based on those inputs were deliberated upon. These included issues such as: Session allocation/planning/time slotting; Workflow allocation; Vaccinator's allocation; Sending SMS to vaccinators and beneficiaries; and connectivity issues.

( With inputs from ANI )