Health min warns people against fake Co-WIN apps

PTI, Jan 7, 2021, 12:30 PM IST

New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday cautioned people against downloading and sharing personal information on some apps named Co-WIN, “created by unscrupulous elements”, that sound similar to the upcoming official platform of the government for carrying out the COVID-19 vaccination process.

“Some apps named ‘Co-WIN’ apparently created by unscrupulous elements to sound similar to upcoming official platform of Government, are on Appstores. DO NOT download or share personal information on these. MoHFW Official platform will be adequately publicised on its launch,” the Union Health ministry tweeted.

The Co-WIN (COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network) app, a digital platform created for real-time monitoring of COVID-19 vaccine delivery and distribution by the Centre, is almost in its final stages of implementation and hasn’t gone live on Google play store or any other app store.

Meanwhile, states and UTs have collected data of healthcare and frontline workers who would be administered the anti-coronavirus vaccine on first priority and the data is being uploaded on the Co-WIN software, the ministry said.

The health ministry had earlier at a press conference stated that Co-WIN digital platform includes a free downloadable mobile application which can help record vaccine data. One can register themselves on it if they want the vaccine.

“There will be five modules in Co-WIN app — Administrator module, registration module, vaccination module, beneficiary acknowledgement module and report module.”

The administrator module is for the administrators who will be conducting these vaccination sessions, it said. Through this module, they can create sessions and the respective vaccinators and managers will be notified.

The registration module is for people to get registered for vaccination. It will upload bulk data on co-morbidity provided by local authorities or by surveyors.

The vaccination module will verify the beneficiary’s details and update vaccination status.

The beneficiary acknowledgement module will send SMS to beneficiaries. It will also generate QR-based certificates after one gets immunised, the health ministry said.

The report module will prepare reports of how many vaccine sessions have been conducted, how many people have attended those, how many people have dropped out etc.

The app will also send real-time data of the temperature of the cold-storages to the main server, it said.