Sonu Sood to create volunteer programme for COVID-19 vaccination registration in rural India

MUMBAI: There's no stopping actor Sonu Sood! On Friday, he came up with one more initiative to extend his support to people amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

He has now launched COVREG, which aims to create a volunteer programme for COVID-19 vaccination registration in rural India.

The particular initiative is powered by rural fintech leader Spice Money, which will provide the technological expertise for building the application, and will onboard volunteers through the website www.covreg.in.

Opening up about the initiative, Sonu said, "Vaccination is the need of the hour in India to win the battle against COVID-19. Rural India continues to struggle in coping with the pandemic and is now also struggling with vaccine registrations. So, COVREG is created based on a detailed understanding of rural India and its needs observed through months of on-ground work."

"COVREG addresses rural-specific issues of vaccine registration and provides much-needed assistance to hesitant rural citizens. The trust that a neighborhood volunteer warrants will be an additional push towards registration," he added.

Also, COVREG has been authorised by the Ministry of Health, Government of India as an Application Service Provider (ASP), with protected CoWIN APIs.

Proper training will be given to COVREG volunteers to address any issues, such as a lack of ID proof, wherein they will assist the beneficiaries in applying for a PAN card online. Anyone with a smartphone and 4G connectivity can become a volunteer by registering on www.covreg.in.

Before this, Sonu helped several migrants to reach homes during the first lockdown last year. He even created a foundation and formed a team to help people in arranging COVID-19 relief resources-- especially when India faced a huge oxygen crisis during the second COVID wave.