Prime Minister Modi said on Tuesday India will use mobile technology for mass inoculation against the coronavirus disease in the country as chances of the availability of a Covid-19 vaccine soon going up. The Prime Minister said mobile technology has enabled benefits worth billions of dollars to reach the deserving and also helped the poor and vulnerable during the pandemic. “It is also with the help of mobile technology that we will embark on one of the world’s largest Covid-19 vaccination drive,” he said without giving details.
PM Modi was speaking at the India Mobile Congress (IMC), considered the largest digital technology event in India and the biggest international technology conference in South Asia.
Three leading vaccine developers - Pfizer Inc, Serum Institute of India Ltd and Bharat Biotech International Limited - have applied for emergency use authorisation in India. Pfizer India has applied to the drug regulator for permission to import its experimental mRNA vaccine for sale and distribution without the requirement for local clinical trials.
SII, AstraZeneca’s India vaccine partner, has applied for emergency use authorisation using data from Phase-III trials that were conducted locally, as well as in Brazil and the UK. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has sought a nod for Covaxin, which is being indigenously developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The applications mean that a mass vaccine effort could be shortly underway in India that has the world’s second-largest coronavirus caseload.
{{/usCountry}}The applications mean that a mass vaccine effort could be shortly underway in India that has the world’s second-largest coronavirus caseload.
{{/usCountry}}The Prime Minister also pitched for making India a global hub for telecom equipment, design, development, manufacturing. “We need to work together to ensure a timely roll-out of 5G to leapfrog into the future and empower millions of Indians,” he said.
Speaking on mobile technology, he said it was because of this that the government was able to provide benefits worth billions of dollars to millions of Indians. “It is because of mobile technology that we are seeing billions of cashless transactions which boost formalisation and transparency. It is because of mobile technology that we will enable smooth contactless interface on toll booths,” he said
The government is planning a detailed technological road map to optimise the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine. The plan will include the use of more regional languages for creating awareness, addressing challenges of last-mile vaccinators and generating alerts about fake vaccines. Health workers will be at the forefront of the immunisation drive while information technology (IT) experts will be in charge at the back end. Experts are working to develop requisite software to ensure the vaccine is properly distributed across the country.
An inter-ministerial team for this purpose has members from the ministries of IT and health and as well as the United Nations Development Programme. The government is expected to roll out the COVIN app to track the procurement, supply and distribution of the vaccine to the last mile. The app is likely to be a bolstered version of the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (e-VIN) used for the polio eradication programme in India. The e-VIN technology is currently active in 32 states and Union Territories and the government plans to roll it out in the remaining ones immediately.
“23,507 cold chain points across 585 districts of 22 states and 2 UTs [Union Territories] routinely use the eVIN technology for efficient vaccine logistics management. Over 41,420 vaccine cold chain handlers have been introduced to digital record-keeping by training them on eVIN. Nearly 23,900 electronic temperature loggers have been installed on vaccine cold chain equipment for accurate temperature review of vaccines in storage,” the government said in a statement in August.
As per the ministry’s dashboard, 26,567 new Covid-19 cases took India’s tally past the 9.7 million mark to 9,703,770 on Tuesday. India has reported 383,000 active infections, 9.17 million recoveries and 1,40,958 deaths so far.
(With agency inputs)