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Proactively prepping for nationwide roll-out of Covid-19 vaccine: Govt
“Robust, dependable and agile technology shall form both the foundation and the back-up for the country’s Covid-19 vaccination", Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman of the Empowered Group said.
The Centre has been proactively preparing for the nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive that begins on January 16, the Union ministry of health and family welfare said on Sunday, following a virtual meeting with administrators from states and Union Territories on the Co-WIN software which forms the backbone of the last mile vaccine administration.
Ram Sewak Sharma, who is the chairman of the Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to combat Covid-19 and member of the National Expert Group on vaccine administration of Covid-19, talked about the Co-WIN software and the principles that shall underpin the technology back-up for the vaccination exercise, the health ministry said in a statement.
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“Robust, dependable and agile technology shall form both the foundation and the back-up for the country’s Covid-19 vaccination which shall be the world’s largest immunisation exercise,” Sharma said, adding that this was an unprecedented scale of immunisation.
He told the participants of the meeting that the vaccination drive should be citizen-centric, and built on the approach that the vaccine shall be available anytime and anywhere. Sharma also stressed on the need to be flexible without compromising on quality. “The inclusivity, speed and scalability have been kept in mind while designing the unique digital platform with all components being portable, synchronous without excessive and unnecessary dependencies,” he reiterated.
The Empowered Group chairperson emphasised on the critical importance of capturing the vaccination data in real time, stating that this was non-negotiable; while the posting of data on the portal may be online or offline in view of connectivity issues being highlighted by few states.
He cautioned the members against proxies and asked them to ensure the beneficiaries were “uniquely and undeniably” identified.
How to ensure ‘no proxies’?
Sharma advised states to urge the beneficiaries to seed their current mobile number with Aadhar for registration and consequent communication through SMS as there cannot be any proxies for Aadhar authentication. He pointed out that it is extremely important to clearly identify the person who is getting vaccinated and keep a digital record on who gets vaccinated by whom, when and which vaccine. He also advised the states and UTs that the data collection should meet the purpose of facilitating work and that needs to be validated at the field levels.
To ensure smooth flow if the vaccination drive, the group also discussed issues like session allocation/planning/time slotting, workflow allocation, vaccinator’s allocation, sending SMS to vaccinators and beneficiaries, and connectivity issues.
