To fight the coronavirus, India has started a vaccine campaign, but still many aspects have to be paid attention. Apart from technical considerations, hearsay and confusion about the vaccine. So leveraging India’s strength and experience in using technology to deliver vaccines on a large scale, the government created and launched the COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-Win) to monitor its vaccination campaign at all times.
This digital platform forms a basis for giving vaccines to everyone. Regarding the Co-Win app, the Union Health Ministry claims that while designing a unique digital platform, uniqueness, speed and dissemination have been taken into consideration, with which it will be portable, synchronous without excessive and unnecessary dependencies. As vaccination has started and it has been found that there are some glitches in the digital system and this needs immediate attention.
Recently designed and developed by the government for cohesive collaboration among all stakeholders to create a robust vaccine delivery ecosystem, the Co-Win app recently underwent something wrong. Vaccination of 1.3 billion people in India is a very challenging task. Its success will depend to a large extent on the active participation of people and the involvement of many stakeholders. Before launching the world’s largest vaccination campaign, the government realized that technology would play an important role in making it successful.
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Initially, it was found that the government had not included the people who had registered for the vaccination in the first few days but had not disclosed them. The technical glitches related to the lack of provision for the management of absentees. There was a need to create a digital registration system to add another person to replace the absentee. The list needs to be updated and certified in real time to cover the missing people. Now real-time authentication through Aadhaar is also being introduced for this facility.
Regarding this, Rajiv Mishra, President of APAC Region-Day Today Health, says that vaccine dose tracking and traceability from the location of vaccine manufacture to vaccination of citizens is necessary to make the world’s largest vaccination campaign a success. There should be live tracking of this program and it should be monitored at every step. From the first day to the next round of the 21st day, it is very important for tracking, data management, analytics. It is also important to avoid any flaws. Apart from this, tracking and tracing are also necessary to ensure safety and quality and to prevent black marketing and corruption.
However, the government is making efforts in the right direction. For effective and favourable conditions, it is necessary to strengthen the strong artificial intelligence and machine learning system. To increase the scale, the government should focus on third-party service providers for their effectiveness and focus on the creation of a product that will serve its purpose as well as provide consumers with an excellent experience. ”
The Co-Win platform is certainly an extension of the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN). This network digitizes the vaccine stock and monitors the temperature of the cold chain through the smartphone application. It was introduced in the year 2012, when it was widely used in twelve states to support efficient vaccine logistics management at cold chain points. The innovative network supports India’s Universal Immunization Program and provides real-time data on vaccine storage, stock and flow and storage temperatures at all cold chain points across the country.
According to experts, it is very important to clearly identify the person who gets vaccinated and ensure who, who, when and who gets vaccinated. In the first phase, the identified priority groups – health care professionals (70 lakh) and frontline workers (2.1 crores) will be vaccinated. By 21 August, 30 crore people will be vaccinated in the first phase only, which will include people above 50 years of age (26 crores) and others with any other disease (1.2 crores). It aims to cover all adult population (60%) in two years in total.
The success of the two-year-long vaccination campaign required India not only for tracking purposes, but also to prioritize beneficiaries, identify target areas, manage absentees, and improve the entire vaccine delivery system in the targeted segment. Investing in a robust analytics engine will also have to be done for planning and forecasting analytics.
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The general public, including health professionals and frontline workers, are terrified to get the vaccine. The main reason for this fear is that the Indian regulator has approved two vaccine candidates, Covidshield and Covexin, for candidate emergency use. Its third stage test data is still not made public, so people are unaffiliated on its efficacy. The vaccine takes a long time to develop and it also takes a decade. It took 26 years to develop a vaccine for human papillomavirus (for cervical cancer) and 25 years for rotavirus (against gastroenteritis).
Thirty-five million people have died of AIDS in the last 40 years. Since 1987, 30 vaccine candidates have been tested in human clinical trials, but no candidate has approved the Phase III trial to date. Despite heavy investment, there is no vaccine for malaria and other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS.
The government has not come up with a clear stand on the investigation against adverse events after vaccination (AEFI), so the general public has doubts and fears over the effects of vaccination. However, they are aware of the minor effects or side effects that come with any vaccination. Where earlier a lot of people were reluctant to get vaccinated, now a large number of people are coming forward.