India to make CoWIN available to all countries: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the government is preparing its Covid vaccination platform — CoWIN — as an open-source and soon it will be available to all countries.

“Indian civilization considers the whole world as one family. This pandemic has made many people realize 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,” he said while addressing Global CoWin Conclave via video conference.

He stated that vaccination is the “best hope for humanity” to emerge successfully from the pandemic and technology plays an integral part in it. “Right from the beginning, we in India decided to adopt a completely digital approach while planning our vaccination strategy,” he said. “Technology is integral to our fight against Covid-19. Luckily, the 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.”

Indian civilization considers the whole world as one family.

This pandemic has made many people realize 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: PM

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) July 5, 2021

Acknowledging that there is no parallel to such a pandemic, Modi pointed out that experience showed no nation can solve the challenge of Covid-19 in isolation. “There is no parallel to such a pandemic in a hundred years. Experience shows that no nation, however powerful that nation is, can solve a challenge like this in isolation,” he said.

Modi also said India has been committed to sharing all its experiences, expertise and resources with the global community in this battle. “Despite all our constraints, we have tried to share as much as possible with the world.”

About 50 countries, such as Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama and Uganda, have shown interest in adopting CoWIN to run their vaccination drives, Dr R S Sharma, the CEO of the National Health Authority (NHA), had said recently, adding that India is ready to globally share the open-source software for free.