Self-Register For COVID-19 Vaccine With Co-WIN App: All You Need to Know

Given the coronavirus pandemic that has been ruling the discussions of this year, chances are that you have had at least one conversation about the COVID-19 vaccine and how India plans to carry out the vaccination process for all its citizens. My house help makes sure to check in with me every week about the same and is very keenly following the news of the vaccination. She says that her family cannot afford to succumb to COVID-19 and hence getting vaccinated is imperative to their survival.

Adding to these discussions, there seems to be some good news from the manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine and various news suggests that in 2021 we are likely to start getting vaccinated. And India will soon have a new medium to track how we will receive the vaccine.

The government has launched the COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) system, which is a digitised platform, that will be used to track the enlisted beneficiaries and the COVID-19 vaccines on a real-time basis. While the app is still under development, it will be available for free download across all platforms.

Things to know

• The app has been made to primarily help agencies track the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines as well as enable citizens of the country to register for the vaccination process.
• As per the guidelines issued by the government, the latest electoral roll for Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections will be used to identify the priority population over the age of 50, eligible for the vaccine.
• To avail the vaccination, one must be pre-registered. No on-the-spot registrations will be entertained.
• In the order of priority, healthcare workers, frontline workers, and those above the age of 50 will be given priority for the vaccination. This will be followed by those who are below 50 but have certain comorbidities.
• Each session will have between 100 to 200 beneficiaries.
• The vaccination team will consist of a vaccinator officer (a person legally authorised to administer injections), doctors, nurse, pharmacist and support staff.
• Besides the above authorities, at least one person from the police, home guard, National Cadet Corp (NCC) will be there to check the registration details before being granted entry.
• After the vaccine is administered, the person will have to remain in the premises for about 30 minutes for observation.
• Each person who shows up for the vaccination will be required to bring with them 12 photo identity documents, which will include Aadhaar card, voter id, driving license, passport, and pension document.
• Each state will be allocated the vaccine from one manufacturer to avoid any sort of mix-up.

How will the app work?

According to a statement issued by Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan — “The digital platform Co-WIN application and dashboard will help monitor the entire vaccination process.”

• Through the ‘Administrator module’ on the Co-WIN app, administrators who would be conducting these vaccination sessions will further create sessions for those who need to get vaccinated.
• The ‘Vaccination module’ will help in verifying beneficiary details and update vaccination status.
• The ‘Beneficiary acknowledgement module’ will send out SMSes to the beneficiaries and also generate QR-based certificates after one gets vaccinated.
• The ‘Report module’ will prepare reports of how many vaccine sessions have been conducted, how many people have attended those, how many people have dropped out, etc.
• The Co-WIN mobile app would also send real-time data of temperature of the cold-storage facilities to the main server.

This is a developing story and we will continue to update the same as and when more information is received.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)