Emphasising the importance of technology in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday announced that India's COVID vaccination platform CoWIN is being prepared to be made open source and soon it will be available to all countries.
Addressing the CoWIN Global Conclave, PM Modi said, "Indian civilisation considers the whole world as one family. This pandemic has made many people realise the fundamental truth of this philosophy. That's why, our technology platform for COVID vaccination - the platform we call CoWIN- is being prepared to be made open source."
CoWIN was developed in India as the central IT system for strategizing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating Covid-19 vaccination across the country.
Key takeaways by PM Modi
1. PM Modi stressed that today's Conclave is the first step to introduce this platform to the global audience. Underlining India's commitment to sharing experiences, expertise and resources with the global community, the Prime Minister also expressed India's eagerness to learn from global practices.
2. The Prime Minister informed that through CoWIN, India has administered 350 million doses of Covid vaccines, including 9 million people in one day, a few days ago. "Furthermore, vaccinated people do not need to carry around fragile pieces of paper to prove anything. It is all available in digital format."
3. The Prime Minister also highlighted the customizability to the software as per the local requirements of the interested countries.
4. Noting that technology is integral to India's fight against COVID-19, PM Modi said luckily, software is one area in which there are no resource constraints. "That's why we made our COVID tracing and tracking App open source as soon as it was technically feasible," he said.
5. He pointed out that with nearly 200 million users, the Aarogya Setu app is a readily available package for developers. Having been used in India, the Prime Minister told the global audience, they can be sure that it has been tested in the real world for speed and scale.
6. Asserting that vaccination is the best hope for humanity to emerge successfully from the pandemic, Modi said right from the beginning, "we in India decided to adopt a completely digital approach while planning our vaccination strategy".
The Prime Minister concluded with the hope that guided by the approach of 'One Earth, One Health', humanity will certainly overcome this pandemic.
About 50 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama and Uganda, have shown interest in adopting CoWIN to run their vaccination drives, Dr RS Sharma, the CEO of the National Health Authority (NHA), had said recently, adding that India is ready to share the open-source software for free.