India will provide the CoWin technology for free to other countries that have shown interest to use it to run their vaccination programmes, said RS Sharma, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority, and in-charge of the CoWin platform.

“We have got clear instructions from the Prime Minister that we should offer this technology for free to other countries who are interested in using it. This would be a gift from India,” Sharma told BusinessLine , adding that most of the countries from Africa and South America have shown interest in using the technology. India is organising a virtual CoWIN Global Conclave on July 5, in which all these countries will participate, he said.

Surge in load

Asked whether the CoWin platform is ready to take a surge in load as the country is aiming to vaccinate one crore people a day, Sharma said the CoWin platform is ready for that and that there is a lot of bandwidth in CoWin to stretch its capacity.

“There is a lot of agility in the CoWin platform as we have a space for cloud, so whenever it is needed, we can stretch the capacity of the CoWin just-in-time,” he said. “Vaccination data is collected on a real-time basis. The data has to be captured online whether the vaccination is being done through online registration or walk-in. And the moment we get the data we issue the digital certificate,” said Sharma when asked whether data is being recorded on a real-time basis.

Meanwhile, on the need for a new IT platform for registration as the country gears up to vaccinate children aged between 2-18 years, Sharma said the CoWin platform will remain the same and that there is no need to create another platform; however, the software rules will have to be changed.

“We don’t need to make a new platform if children are to be vaccinated. We will just have to change the rules of software as currently only those aged above 18 years or more can do their registration,” said Sharma.

“Changes are done on CoWin whenever the age criteria for vaccination is changed or the apps have to be made more user-friendly and this would continue to happen as the policy evolves and changes,” Sharma added.

comment COMMENT NOW