With a view to ramp up vaccination against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India, appointments on CoWIN can now be booked via Google. Taking to Twitter, Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the health ministry took another significant initiative to enhance access to vaccines.
Explaining how to book an appointment on CoWIN via Google, Mandaviya tweeted, “Search ‘Covid vaccine near me’ on Google, Check availability of slots and more, Use ‘Book Appointment’ feature to book a slot.”
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Google, in partnership with the health ministry, started showing vaccine centres on its search engine in March this year, according to a blog post. “Starting this week, for over 13,000 locations across the country, people will be able to get more helpful information about vaccine availability and appointments -- powered by real-time data from the CoWIN APIs,” the post added.
The information would comprise availability of appointment slots at each vaccination centre; vaccines and doses offered (first and second); pricing (whether paid or free) and a link to CoWIN’s website for booking. The blog post also said that the aforementioned details will automatically reflect when people search for vaccine centres near them or in any particular area across the American technology giant’s platforms: Google Search, Maps and Google Assistant.
{{/usCountry}}The information would comprise availability of appointment slots at each vaccination centre; vaccines and doses offered (first and second); pricing (whether paid or free) and a link to CoWIN’s website for booking. The blog post also said that the aforementioned details will automatically reflect when people search for vaccine centres near them or in any particular area across the American technology giant’s platforms: Google Search, Maps and Google Assistant.
{{/usCountry}}Apart from English, people will also be able to search details on vaccine availability in eight other languages including Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, and Marathi. Google added that it will partner closely with CoWIN to extend this functionality to all vaccination centres across the country.
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“As people continue to seek information related to the pandemic to manage their lives around it, we remain committed to finding and sharing authoritative and timely information across our platforms,” Google further said.
India has so far administered 654,113,508 vaccine doses to eligible beneficiaries since the beginning of the inoculation drive in January this year. On Tuesday, the country set a record of administering over 13.3 million doses in a span of 24 hours. The health ministry’s dashboard shows that a total of 503,331,527 beneficiaries have received the first dose till now and the remaining 150,781,981 are fully vaccinated.