All you wanted to know about Co-WIN

To carry out the Covid-19 vaccination drive as smoothly as possible, the government is relying on Co-WIN, a digital intelligence platform. It is built on an indigenously developed electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) which has been in use since 2015. Each person who would be receiving Covid-19 vaccination in India would have to register on the Co-WIN network and and he/she would be followed up for subsequent shots as well as for any adverse event following immunisation (AEFI).

Registration on the Co-WIN app is mandatory for anyone to receive the vaccination. Co-WIN is a cloud-based IT solution for planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Covid-19 vaccination in India. It is an end-to-end solution that connects the entire public health system from national level right up to the vaccinator level. Co-WIN allows for creation of different users (admins, supervisors, and vaccinators), registration of beneficiaries, followed by planning and scheduling sessions and subsequently vaccine administration and following up of beneficiaries after the vaccination.

In a real-time basis, the app tracks not only the beneficiaries but also the availability of vaccine stock at the national, State and district levels. This allows the system to monitor the utilisation, wastage, coverage of Covid-19 vaccination at various levels.

In the first phase of vaccination, India plans to inoculate a whopping 30 crore people, starting with healthcare workers. This would be one of the most ambitious adult immunisation programmes ever undertaken by any country. Executing such a massive programme needs meticulous planning and implementation, involving tracking whether the vaccine shots have reached each session site in good condition, scheduling vaccination for each beneficiary, follow-up for the second dose on time, and monitoring AEFI that a small fraction of the vaccinated people would encounter. The platform is expected to do all this with minimum human intervention.

Thorough planning has gone into readying the Co-WIN platform for scheduling vaccination of priority groups. The data of healthcare workers and frontline corona warriors such as sanitation workers, police personnel and those involved in offering essential services to the public have already been uploaded. Other priority groups such as those above 50 years of age and those below 50 but having serious co-morbidities have to self-register on Co-WIN. If you belong to the latter category, you have to register yourself with bona fide credentials when the platform allows it.

Each vaccinated person will be issued a digital certificate with details of the vaccine shot he/she received and the schedule for the next round of the shot, among other things.

While the registration on Co-WIN is essential to get the vaccination, the government has not opened it up for self-registration yet. Do be aware that a number of financial frauds are getting reported with unscrupulous elements calling up unsuspecting people asking for their Aadhaar and PAN card details. The government has disowned many apps that are floating around with similar sounding names.

Once it goes live, there would be three different options for people to register using the Co-WIN app or website — self-registration, individual registration and bulk upload. The government is still to reveal the details of these. The government has listed 12 different documents that can be used for registration as well as for proving the identity of the beneficiary at the time of vaccination.

They include voter ID, Aadhaar card, PAN card, passport, passbook issued by banks and post office, service ID card issued by Central/State governments and public limited companies, pension document with photograph, health insurance smart card, and MGNREGS job card.

Lets hope Co-WIN is win-win for the citizen.

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