India’s COVID-19 vaccination drive will be flagged of by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 10.30am on January 16 with 3,006 sites where the roll-out will get under way virtually connected during the launch. The Co-WIN IT platform that will track the drive from back-end to beneficiaries is also likely to be activated with its use initially limited to central and state governments.
A 24×7 call centre — 1075 — has also been established for addressing queries related to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software, said an official release. “Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the inaugural day,” the government said on 14th January.
The Co-WIN platform, central to planning, implementation and monitoring of the vaccination drive, will offer limited access to healthcare workers, enabling them to feed some data and receive information about their vaccination. The names of about one crore health workers have been prepopulated on the platform. “Co-WIN will be available to the general public in the form of an online website as well as a mobile application within a month,” an official said, as reported in TOI.
Healthcare workers from government and private sectors, including ICDS workers, will receive vaccine shots during the initial phase, moving on to frontline workers.
India will begin its inoculation drive with two vaccines — Oxford University and AstraZeneca’s vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute ‘Covishield’ and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin; both of which have been granted emergency-use authorization by the drug regulator earlier this month.