New Delhi, Jan 10 (UNI) The Chairman of Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to combat COVID-19 and member of National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration RS Sharma on Sunday said that Co-WIN software is a robust, dependable and agile technology shall form both the foundation and the back-up for the country’s COVID-19 vaccination which shall be the world’s largest immunisation exercise.
Addressing the State Principal Secretaries, National Health Mission (NHM) Directors, and State Immunisation officers and senior officers of the Health Ministry on virtual mode, Mr Sharma discussed in details of the feedback of the States and Union Territories on Co-WIN software and its operational use, emanating from the dry runs, was discussed in detail.
“This is an unprecedented scale of immunization and the process the process should be citizen-centric, and built on the approach that the vaccine shall be available anytime and anywhere”, he said.
Stressing on the need to be flexible without compromising on quality, he also 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.
While highlighting the caution one needs to exercise to ensure that there are ‘no proxies’ at all and all the beneficiaries need to be uniquely and undeniably identified, Mr Sharma asked the States to use of Aadhar platform and advised them to urge the beneficiaries to seed their current mobile number with Aadhar for registration and consequent communication through SMS as the there cannot be any proxies for Aadhar authentication.
He pointed out that it is extremely important to clearly identify 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.
