Three pharma companies have applied for emergency use authorisation of their COVID-19 vaccines in India - Pfizer, Serum Institute of India (SII), and Bharat Biotech - and India’s COVID-19 vaccination drive is expected to begin soon too.
In light of the developments, the Union Health Ministry, on December 8, revealed the details of India’s vaccination programme and preparedness to conduct the massive drive. For live updates on coronavirus, click here
Addressing the media, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said the Centre has developed a free mobile application that will aid in tracking and monitoring the entire vaccination drive. The new app - Co-WIN – will additionally help people with comorbidities register themselves and get coronavirus vaccine shots on priority.
In the first two phases of the vaccination programme, the government will focus on vaccinating priority groups, and the Centre is currently compiling data on these two priority groups. In the first stage, frontline workers, i.e., all healthcare professionals will get the vaccine and in the second stage, emergency workers will get the COVID-19 vaccine shots.
From the third stage onwards, people with co-morbidities will be able to self-register themselves through the Co-WIN app.
However, Rajesh Bhushan has said the “government will take a final call on this and these stages may not be sequential. Depending on the availability of the vaccines, these can go on simultaneously”.
The Co-WIN app is an upgraded version of the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN). It will have five modules in total – the vaccination module, the registration module, the beneficiary acknowledgement module, the administrator module, and the report module.
Each module will be of use to different sections of the society. This app will be useful for all those engaged in the process — administrators, vaccinators, and people who are going to receive these vaccine shots.
The administrator module, for instance, will be helpful for those who will be conducting the vaccination sessions. They will be able to create vaccine sessions using this module and vaccinators, and managers will be notified about the same through the app.
Using the registration module, people will be able to register themselves to get the vaccine.
The vaccination module will be used to verify the details of the beneficiaries and update the vaccination status accordingly.
The beneficiary acknowledgement module will be used to send SMS to beneficiaries and generate QR-based certificates for those who have got vaccinated.
The report module will keep track of how many vaccine sessions have been conducted, how many people attended those, how many dropped out, etc.
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