The digital infrastructure is the bedrock on which CoWIN has been built and which, in turn, has enabled the Government of India to deliver 100 crore vaccine shots to its citizens. When the government embarked on the campaign to provide COVID-19 vaccination to every citizen, it realized that it has to build a digital system.
This digital system under R.S. Sharma was built in record time. Today, it is a repository of data—every citizen getting a COVID vaccine shot feeds their name and cell number as well as their Aadhaar number into the system, which then captures and stores the data. That the citizen has taken their second dose too is also added to the database. Therefore, this database contains information that is verifiable.
This digital system has enabled the government to scale up the vaccination drive to an unbelievable level—clocking a record 2.26 crore vaccine doses in a single day and 1 crore-plus doses on several days, and finally reaching the 100-crore landmark.
The digital system also allows people to download the vaccine completion certificate and carry it with them and show it to anybody when they travel, including authorities in India and overseas. This is truly an extraordinary feat. We have not seen a similar digital infrastructure created at this scale in any other country.
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Even in developed countries like the UK and the US, people still get hand-written certificates, which is not in any database and not verifiable through any database either—in other words, it is a big mess. India is an exception where the COVID vaccination programme is digital, right from the beginning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made sure that India had the digital infrastructure—this proved to be the foundation on which India’s successful vaccination campaign was mounted.
Of course, Serum Institute of India and others who developed vaccines as well as the infrastructure needed to scale up the delivery to unprecedented levels also played a huge role in India achieving the 100-crore vaccination mark in such a short span.
Credit must also be given to the government and the health authorities, who enabled Covaxin to get registered and developed in India, for India. They also enabled Serum Institute to expand its facilities to develop vaccines.
The Government of India has also offered CoWIN as a digital infrastructure to other countries. And, I do feel that all other countries should look at CoWIN and white-label it for their use. This is a part of the Digital India dream that the Prime Minister gave us in 2015, and it has stood India in good stead. It enabled the country to successfully carry out a massive vaccination programme.
The author is Chairman, Aarin Capital Partners. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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