New Delhi: Vaccine beneficiaries were initially hesitant to get the shots, but their confidence “built up” later, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare told states Monday while sharing feedback on the first day of the immunisation drive against Covid-19 carried out on 16 January.
In a letter, Secretary, MoHFW, Rajesh Bhushan, congratulated all states and union territories “for making the nationwide launch of Covid-19 vaccination a success”.
India Saturday kick-started the drive to inoculate an estimated 3 crore healthcare and frontline workers in the first phase.
The letter, seen by ThePrint, is marked to additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries and health secretaries across states and UTs. It said “one of the key feedback received from states is that on first day due to an initial hesitation many people who were scheduled for the launch session did not turn up…”
However, many beneficiaries came in later to get the shots.
“…later in the day as the confidence built up, many people turned up at the session sites and of which few were not scheduled for a session on that day, but were part of our healthcare workers database,” Bhushan wrote.
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Important to register all workers on CoWIN app
According to the letter, the health secretary said only the beneficiaries who have been allocated sessions through CoWIN are to be vaccinated at the sites based on current guidelines.
CoWIN is a cloud-based IT solution for planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of Covid-19 vaccination in India.
Bhushan stressed the importance to upload the data of all those vaccinated, despite not being registered, on CoWIN.
“It is important that all beneficiaries are individually monitored and tracked so as to ensure that the required number of vaccine doses are given, there is no intermixing of vaccines, monitoring of persons post-vaccination can be coordinated and hence it is of critical importance that all beneficiaries are entered in CoWIN,” he said.
Govt planning to tweak CoWIN software
The central government has in the letter ordered all states to upload the data without failure.
“Accordingly it is proposed that all session sites wherein on day one, people have been vaccinated without being scheduled shall be uploaded in CoWIN without fail. The following action shall be taken up promptly by all DIOs (district immunisation officers) in such cases,” the letter read, also asking states to take “urgent necessary action” in this regard.
The letter, in three points, explained the steps on how to register the beneficiaries who turn up without appointment.
The government is also planning to tweak the software.
“Based on field feedback, the workflow of the vaccinator module is further being refined to allow entering details of people eligible, though not allotted for that specific and the same, is deployed shortly.”
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