New Delhi: As the government is getting ready for the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccination, the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday presented a robust Co-WIN vaccine delivery management system.
According to the Health Ministry's plan, the authentication of a beneficiary will be done on the basis of Aadhaar and a confirmatory SMS will be sent to beneficiaries in at least 12 languages.
While addressing a Press conference, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said, "We have developed Co-WIN for the roll-out of the vaccination drive in India. The beneficiaries would be enrolled through Co-WIN app and there will be automated session allocation."
"There are four primary vaccine stores called GMSD located in Karnal, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and there are 37 state vaccine stores in the country. They store vaccines in bulk and distribute further," Bhushan said.
States are responsible for sending the vaccines to primary health centres and from there, vaccines will be taken to sub-centres through passive equipment like ice boxes.
The Co-WIN Delivery Management plan includes automated session allocation, SMS to be sent in 12 languages, 24x7 helpline, chatbox with pattern recognition to help navigate portal, digital locker for integrated data retrieval and storing of QR code certificate.
"Healthcare workers and frontline workers would not need to register themselves as a beneficiary as their data is a bulk database that has been populated on the Co-WIN vaccine delivery management system in a bulk manner," Bhushan said.
"We are prepared to roll out vaccine within 10 days of emergency use authorisation approvals. The final call will be taken by the government," he said. However, as per sources, it is expected the vaccination drive would be rolled out on January 14, which is considered as a very auspicious day due to Makar Sakranti.
With the objective to assess planning and preparations of Covid-19 vaccination as per guidelines and end-to-end testing of Co-WIN, the government has conducted 286 session sites across 125 districts in all states/UTs prepared and tested as a model session sites.
"Physical verification of all proposed sites has been done for the adequacy of space, logistical arrangements, internet connectivity, electricity, safety etc. Some minor issues were noted in Co-WIN for further enhancement, which has been addressed," he said, adding that all states expressed confidence in the operational guidelines and IT platform for large scale programme implementation.
"Vaccination teams have been identified and trained in all aspects, while all SoPs and protocols related to the operationalisation of Covid-19 vaccination have been followed. It has also been arranged enabled environment for infection prevention and control for service providers and beneficiaries," he said.