Busting myths that CoWIN can be hacked and has led to a digital divide, RS Sharma, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority (NHA) and in-charge of the CoWIN Platform, said on Saturday that the system is so robust that it can’t be hacked and has been simplified further to make it more inclusive.

“The platform has undergone meticulous security testing. We state this with absolute certainty that no breaches have been found till date. No scripts can bypass the OTP verification and CAPTCHA to automatically register an individual,” Sharma said in a statement.

He said claims that illegitimate coders are making money by booking slots for common citizens by running scripts, are completely unsubstantiated. CoWIN wouldn’t have been able to smoothly scale to over 90 million vaccines till date through online registrations alone if citizens were paying Rs 400 to Rs 3,000 ($7 to $40) to the scamsters.

Digital divide

On bridging the digital divide, Sharma said the government has simplified the registration process to make it accessible to all. He also said they will soon launch the option to choose from Monosyllabic / single word questions that have been used to overcome language vernaculars to further aid this concern.

“We will soon launch the option to choose from 14 vernaculars to further aid this concern. Sign-ups and registrations only demand mobile numbers, name, age, and gender. Further, CoWIN provides up to 7 options for identification, not restricting the choice to Aadhaar,” Sharma added.

To make the vaccination drive more inclusive, a citizen can register up to four individuals with the same mobile number, Sharma said, while adding that more than 2,50,000 Community Service Centres (CSCs) have been equipped to assist rural citizens with registrations.

“Additionally, we are in the process of initiating call centres at the NHA (National Health Authority) to help individuals sign up over phone calls. And as mentioned previously, offline walk-ins have been available to those that can’t register online, evident from the 110 million+ doses administered through offline walk-ins,” he further said.

Meanwhile, the proportion between online registrations and offline walk-ins has been modified time-to-time to manage the overwhelming crowds and maintain law-and-order at vaccination centres. In fact, nearly 55 per cent of the 211.8 million doses administered till date have been through walk-ins, Sharma stated.

Sharma further noted that the demand-supply for vaccinesin the 18-44 age bracket is skewed. The ratio of registrations to doses administered stands at 6.5: 1, which was an alarming 11:1 a week before. Overall, with over 244 million registrations and over 167 million receiving at least one dose (as per data at 7 pm 29th May 2021), The shortfall explains the current proceedings, which will catch up as time passes and there is a larger supply of vaccines.

Published on May 29, 2021