Maharashtra govt onboards blockchain tech for issuing COVID-19 test certificates

The Maharashtra government, not the onboarded startup, will own and control the data and hardware.

Moneycontrol News

May 26, 2021 / 11:11 IST

Representative image

As blockchain enters the mainstream, Maharashtra government's Disaster Management Department has adopted the technology, in partnership with a startup Print2Block, to issue COVID-19 test certificates. The certificates are issued to people who test negative for COVID-19.

"We have been able to meet the demands of scalability and data security. Out of lakhs of people tested in the state on a daily basis, almost 70-80 percent are tested negative," Print2Block’s co-founder Joji Varghese told Inc24.

Earlier, a number of news reports had suggested that the Maharashtra government was working with a public blockchain startup for the same. The government later clarified that they have deployed a private blockchain, not a public one.

Varghese said that as healthcare data "is very sensitive in nature", the company had to tweak their product and build a private blockchain for this purpose. "Now, it is the government who owns and controls the data, hardware and everything," he told the news publication.

Private blockchains require a public blockchain to authenticate and validate its integrity. The Chennai-based startup has deployed a private blockchain and has partnered with Mumbai-based blockchain startup Polygon's Matic Network, a public blockchain, for audit purpose.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show