CoWIN equipped to handle even 10 million vaccines a day: RS Sharma

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Come April 1 and all citizens above 45 years of age become eligible to get vaccinated against Covid-19 across any government or private hospital in India. But RS Sharma, Chairman or the Empowered Group on Covid Vaccines advises people to register and schedule their appointments on the CoWIN portal as opposed to walking in without an appointment.

“Unfortunately we have seen more walk-ins than pre-scheduled appointments in this phase. We are not saying that they should be disallowed, but citizens should do self-scheduling so that crowds are better managed,” he told Money9 in an exclusive video interview.

Sharma added that scheduled appointments also help in better experience, because every vaccine centre will have limited capacity and if more walk-ins arrive, they may not be attended to.

What changes from the current phase?

So far, those above 60 can get vaccinated without any medical certificate, and those above 45 with comorbidities have to take along their medical papers. However,  April 1 onwards all those above 45 years of age can visit vaccination centres without any medical certificate. They just need to carry an identity card like Aadhaar.

Sharma expects a surge in numbers as this coming phase opens up a large volume of citizens immediately and in a few weeks time, those who have been administered the vaccine in Phase 2 will also be eligible for their second dose.

One difference now, however, is that the date for the second dose of the vaccine will not be automatically assigned because of change in the duration between doses announced recently.

“Earlier the second dose could be scheduled automatically. Now with the revised protocol, the user will have to do that. CoWIN will send reminders when users fall due as per which vaccine they took.”

Gearing up to vaccinate millions daily

“We are doing 2.5 – 3 million vaccines a day already. We expect to up it to 5 million now. From a technology standpoint, it is a doable thing. We can also take it to 10 million a day. It is not a tech problem at all,” Sharma said. CoWIN was fraught with technical glitches in its early days, which Sharma said, have been totally addressed.

He also mentioned that there is no dearth of vaccines and the duration between the two doses from 4 weeks to 8 weeks was taken purely on scientific grounds.

“There is no dearth of vaccines. We are not being constrained by supply of vaccines,” he said before adding, ”

“Let me assure you that every decision of this type is taken completely on scientific basis. We go by scientific evidence. No decision is taken on logistics or availability or any other consideration.”

Choosing vaccine and vaccine centres

Sharma said that users registering on CoWIN get entire freedom to select vaccine centres, but not necessarily which vaccine. “You can select vaccination centre, which date you want to get vaccinated. Which vaccine is not a choice. Once you decide a centre, the vaccine also gets decided,” he said.