The centre is expanding the COVID-19 vaccine registration portal (CoWin) to process approximately 10 to 20 million registrations in a day. It is preparing for a sharp increase in procedure with an aggressive extension of the nationwide vaccination initiative from next month.

The officials have said that the user interface on the platform has been smarten up whereas the existing features are simplified further to provide to a larger number of the population who are expected to pre-register in the next phase that will open for those above the age of 45 years.  A senior official stated that they are expecting 4-5 million daily vaccinations in one week and around 25-30% should happen through this CoWin platform. Pre-registering on Cowin app will make the procedure faster for both the citizens and healthcare authorities.

Presently, daily vaccination in India is estimated to be between 2.5 million to 3 million with only a tenth being vaccinated who had pre-registered on the CoWin platform. Bookings on the CoWin were low as more people had chosen the walk-in option at local health centres and hospitals. But this number can change as people seeking vaccinations are increasing and in those who are requiring a second dose have started to seek appointments.

Government officials have mentioned that pre-registering on the CoWin platform will help people not to wait in the queue and speed the process as identification details that are required for authentication will already be entered in.

So far, India has vaccinated more than six crore people since 16th January as first they started vaccinating healthcare and other frontline workers.

The software is being modified with the need to upload a comorbidity certificate during the time of online registration and onsite registration. It has also dropped out the automatic booking slots for the 2nd dose of the vaccine and is leaving it upto the people to register within 6-8 weeks of their 1st dose.

The government has introduced an hourly monitoring mechanism for tracking the progress of vaccination initiatives. This will provide real time information of the authorised centres that are not providing slots or visibility on other operational problems. Feedbacks will be directly monitored by the healthcare secretaries in the state on an hourly basis through a dashboard. Regular emailers will be sent to the health officials and the hospitals for reviewing the functionality of such centres.

In the initial days of its launch, the CoWin platform had faced several glitches such as citizens were not able to register, the interface was crashing and users were not receiving text messages about their appointment schedules. The government is working on a communication initiative to explain to people about how they can register and book slots on the CoWin platform.

Source: ET Healthworld