PremiumUnion Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Monday said that India was offering the CoWIN platform to the world as a technology tool that can be used for greater public good as the need of the hour was to speed up the pace of vaccinating people against Covid.
Addressing the virtual Global CoWIN Conclave, the Health Minister said that India was inching closer to administering 36 crore Covid vaccine doses, a feat achieved in less than six months since the launch of its vaccination drive. He asserted that the the his government was committed to inoculating the entire adult population by December.
Today's conclave on CoWIN was attended by dignitaries from 142 countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis and Zambia.
Vardhan noted that the shared challenges like the current public health crisis can only be addressed through shared actions and resources. He said the fact that vaccinating everyone is key to containing and ending the pandemic cannot be emphasised enough.
"The need of the hour is to speed up the pace of vaccinating people across the world. For this, we are excited to offer the CoWIN platform as a technology tool that can be used for greater public good around the world. I hope all your countries are able to gain value and benefit from our offering," he said.
"Our CoWIN platform is a mirror of the success of the Digital India programme, which has witnessed a consistent upward growth trajectory, achieving numerous milestones and dotted with flagship initiatives," the minister added.
He said that the Modi government was more than glad to share with extended global family the pathbreaking, next-gen digital platform, CoWIN, which has been indigenously developed in India and is powering the rapid progress of one of the world's largest vaccination drives against Covid. CoWIN is the crown jewel of the Digital India initiative, Vardhan said.
"Throughout this pandemic, with the aid of technology, we have been able to execute large-scale surveillance to effectively implement our 'test, track and treat' strategy, helping us attain one of the lowest fatality rates in the world," Vardhan said.
The minister said that with a country of more than 1.3 billion people, India faced a mammoth challenge of ensuring a fair and equitable distribution of the Covid vaccines as well as their last-mile delivery. For a successful vaccination programme, he said, active participation of the country's health infrastructure across the public and private sectors was needed.
Further, there was a need to develop a robust system that could prevent rent-seeking, black-marketing and other malpractices, the minister said.
The backbone of this drive had to be a comprehensive platform that would ensure an equitable coverage across the states and continuous tracking of Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFIs).
Finally, the platform needed to ensure ease of use while also offering a multilingual access. Experts from the ministries of health and electronics and information technology came together to co-create CoWIN in coordination with various other stakeholders.
"As we speak, India is inching closer to administering 360 million (36 crore) Covid vaccine doses. A feat achieved in less than six months since the launch of our vaccination drive and we are committed to inoculating our entire adult population by December," Vardhan said.
NHA CEO R S Sharma said CoWIN or the Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network has been serving as the tech backbone of one of the largest vaccination programmes in the world. "It fills me with pride to proclaim that CoWIN became the fastest tech platform in the world to amass over 200 million (20 crore) registrations in a record four months and then 300 million (30 crore) registrations in a mere five months, yet another record," Sharma said.
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