The government’s Co-Win platform is scalable and it can scale up to one crore in terms of the number of vaccinations a day, provided people come forward in huge numbers, National Health Authority Chairman R S Sharma said.
“It can go up to one crore a day, I have no doubt about that. Our platform is absolutely scalable. This will be limited by vaccine availability, logistics, people coming forward, and other factors. I am merely talking about platform scalability,” he said in an interview with Moneycontrol’s New Economy and Tech Editor Chandra R Srikanth.
After almost a year of fighting Covid-19 disease, this January 16, India launched its vaccination programme with two vaccines approved for restricted emergency use in India.
The two vaccines are AstraZeneca-Oxford University’s Covishield, which is being manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India and the indigenously-made Bharat Biotech-ICMR’s Covaxin.
So far, there have been about 24 lakh registrations for getting the jabs, however, the numbers will increase, depending on the hospitals publishing their timetable and making vaccine slots available.
However, there absolutely is no issue with the portal and the platform has no qualms in seeking help from IT companies to strengthen it. “We will always be kind of looking for tech support from providers,” he added.
Co-Win was rolled out on 16 January, when the Narendra Modi government launched the drive.
India’s initial target is to vaccinate 30 crore people classified into four priority groups — health workers, frontline workers, people aged over 50, and those under 50 with comorbidities.
Asked what lessons he has drawn from his stint as UIDAI Chairman, Sharma said the idea with Aadhar was to create choices for people to go for enrolment.
“Similarly, the idea here is to create choices for people to get their vaccinations. The number of people will increase once you have more choices, people have the flexibility of booking an appointment, then it becomes a completely demand-driven approach,” he said.
Speaking to ANI, Sharma hailed Modi for receiving the first jab of Covaxin at AIIMS, which sent a strong message to reduce the vaccine hesitancy among people.
Giving a reply on a query, Sharma said the government has given instruction to private and public establishments to give on-the-spot certificates after administering vaccines to people.
These certificates will then be made available on digital platforms and on Aarogya Setu, he stated.
Replying to a query, Sharma told another channel that those who do not have not have access to Arogya Setu on their phones, they can log in to the government portal and IVRS helpline, for registration.