Mumbai civic body to develop app for Covid-19 vaccination

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to develop a real time monitoring Covid-19 mobile application to regulate the vaccination process for the 2 crore population in Mumbai.

Following the footsteps of the Union health ministry, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to develop a real time monitoring Covid-19 mobile application to regulate the vaccination process for the 2 crore population in Mumbai.

A health worker collects a swab sample of a passenger at Bandra Terminus in Mumbai, on Sunday. (Satish Bate/HT Photo)

When the pandemic started in India, the Union health ministry launched Aarogya Setu app to keep a track on infected patients and area-wise concentration of Covid-19 infection. Now, as the government is expecting to roll out the first Covid-19 vaccine next year, they have launched a new app — CoWin-20 — which will be the go-to app for Covid-19 vaccine distribution.

Considering the huge population of Mumbai, BMC, in a meeting held on Friday, decided to develop a similar app which will be the digital arm of its Covid-19 vaccination programme.

“We have an experience of providing vaccine to children, but not to adults. So, it will be challenging for us to regulate such a huge adult population for vaccination. For this, we are planning to design a centralised app which will help us to procure the data digitally,” said an official from BMC’s immunisation programme.

The vaccine will be given in two doses with the second dose to be administered after 28 days of the first one. According to officials, the main challenge will be arranging the second dose without missing out on anyone.

“This app will have all the updated data which will be connected to our systems. The users will have to link their Aadhaar number and mobile number. Alert message will also be sent to them regarding the next vaccine,” said Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner, BMC. He is currently heading the vaccine task force of the civic body.

BMC will sync the data of recovered patients from Aarogya Setu app with their own mobile app.

Till Friday, the state has uploaded data of nearly 1.91 lakh healthcare workers, who will be given vaccine on priority in the first slot, on CoWin app. “We want to finish vaccinating healthcare workers within 15 days of the roll out of the vaccine,” Kakani added.

For the Covid-19 vaccination drive in Mumbai, a total of 1,365 vaccinators have been identified from the civic public health department. Each vaccine centre will be capable of vaccinating 1,200 beneficiaries per day.