Reports claiming COVID vaccination fraud misleading, says government

A healthcare worker gives a dose of the Covishield vaccine against the coronavirus disease, to a farmer in his field, during a door-to-door vaccination drive in Banaskantha district in the western state of Gujarat. (Representative image: Reuters)

The Health Ministry on February 3 rejected reports of COVID vaccination “fraud” which claimed that people are being fraudulently registered as double vaccinated without receiving both doses, saying the reports were “ill-informed, baseless and misleading”.

The report published in the Guardian had said the vaccination figures were being manipulated. Responding to the news report, the government clarified that while the report is based on claims by healthcare workers, it is the health workers themselves who enter vaccination event data in CoWIN system.

“The claim of the authors that the very health workers who enter the data have alleged irregularities, indicates that the authors do not have any understanding of the processes of vaccination event recording on CoWIN,” said the ministry in a statement.

According to the government, CoWIN has the necessary features and flexibility to ensure that every eligible individual has access to vaccination, regardless of any physical, digital or socio-economic barriers.

At the same time, SOPs and features have been incorporated to prevent fraudulent or wrong data entry at the time of vaccination through measures such as the presence of a verifier in a vaccination team whose sole purpose is to establish the identity of the beneficiaries.

The statement also said that there are also specific features for COVID vaccination registration, administration or first and second doses and during each step, SMSes are sent to the beneficiaries.

“These features empower the verifier or vaccinators to establish the identity of the beneficiary at the time of verification before marking the beneficiary as vaccinated,” the government said, adding that despite these enablers, there might be cases where vaccination team may overlook the SOPs leading to error in data entry and recording leading to cases where a beneficiary is marked vaccinated without being administered the vaccine.

However, it added that due to the system of SMS communication with beneficiaries through CoWIN, such cases are immediately reported through the grievance redressal mechanism.

On receiving such complaints, the details of the vaccination team and vaccination centres where such cases are reported are sent to the state officials concerned for taking necessary corrective action, the government said.

It was also stressed that the beneficiaries have been empowered to make necessary corrections in their records on CoWIN.

India has successfully implemented its nationwide COVID vaccination programme and administered more than 167 crore doses as on date, covering more than 76 percent of the eligible population above 18 years with both the doses, the ministry underlined.