India has now approved two vaccines for emergency use against COVID-19, an indigenous vaccine, COVAXIN, by Bharat Biotech; and Oxford-Astrazeneca’s Covishield being produced in India by Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII). As dry runs for the vaccination have been done in states and union territories across the country, the question on everyone’s minds is how they can register to be vaccinated and when.
The Union government has announced that the vaccination will happen in phases. The first phase of the inoculation drive will see one crore healthcare and two crore frontline workers vaccinated, apart from other most prioritized beneficiaries, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said. Others among the 30 crore persons who will be vaccinated include 27 crore senior citizens as well as those above the age of 50 with co-morbidities.
As for registration, the Co-WIN app announced by the government is central. “This unique platform will assist in automated session allocation for pre-registered beneficiaries, their verification and for generating a digital certificate upon successful completion of the vaccine schedule,” Harsh Vardhan had earlier said.
While the app is not yet available for the common person to download, this is how it will work.
- Co-WIN stands for Covid Vaccine Intelligence Work, which is a digitised platform for rolling out the vaccine. It is currently in the pre-product stage, and reportedly, it presently has data of around 75 lakh health officials who are in the priority to receive the vaccine.
- Once the app is launched, it will have different modules, namely for user registration, beneficiary registration, vaccination and beneficiary acknowledgement and status updation.
- People who want to register themselves through the beneficiary registration module wherein they can pick between self-registration, individual registration and bulk upload.
- If one chooses to self-register, they can do it through the mobile app or web with a photo identity proof that can be one of the following: Aadhaar card, driving license, PAN card, passport, pension document, MNREGA job card, passbook issued by bank or post office, pension document, voter ID, service identity card issued by central or state government or public sector undertaking or public limited companies, or official identity cards issued by MPs, MLAs, or MLCs.
- Once this registration is done, it will be verified using their credentials whether they are above 50 or below 50 years of age with co-morbidity to ascertain which phase of the inoculation drive they can avail vaccination in.
- Those conducting surveys and district administrators have the authority to register multiple beneficiaries. State and district authorities have already been compiling data for priority beneficiaries into the Co-WIN app from the dry runs and they are the only ones who can access the app as of now.
- Once the registration is done, a person will get details about the date and time for the vaccination. There is no option for on the spot registration in any phase of priority group vaccination.