Vaccination, according to scientists and medical professionals, is the best option for managing the Covid-19 pandemic. In India, citizens who want to receive the Covid-19 vaccination must first register on the government’s CoWin app/website.
People may also register through the Aarogya Setu app and the CoWin site, where they must supply basic information in order to be placed on the waiting list for the vaccination injection. Except for Aarogya Setu, there is no authorised smartphone app to register for vaccinations in India. You must use the app to access the Co-WIN portal.
Every day, vaccination centres provide a limited number of on-the-spot registration slots. Beneficiaries above the age of 45 can arrange appointments online or stroll into immunisation clinics. Beneficiaries above the age of 45 can make appointments online or come into Government immunisation centres.
Beneficiaries between the ages of 18 and 44, on the other hand, must register and schedule appointments online before visiting private vaccination centres.
The vaccine will need to be administered to around 1.9 billion adults in India. While the government claims that 2.16 billion vaccinations would be accessible by the end of 2021, India’s daily vaccination rate has dropped to 1.6 million per day from 3.6 million in April—and with a population of about 1.4 billion, that means that about 230 individuals compete for a single shot.
At the present pace of vaccination, it will take 2.4 years to inoculate everyone, and epidemiologists predict the virus will change before then, maybe to withstand existing vaccinations.
The pandemic’s second wave is ravaging India’s most rural areas, with roughly 25.5 million cases and 283,248 fatalities registered thus far. Due to vaccine hesitancy and a shortage of immunisations, just 2.97% of the population—less than 40 million people—have been completely immunised.
Vaccinations are now available to 600 million 18–44-year-old Indians, roughly double the population of the United States, through online booking. However, due to a significant digital gap, disadvantaged people, the rural population and the technologically illiterate have been excluded from this new vaccination procedure.
The disparity between India’s reality and the government’s strategy has led to criticism of the Co-WIN app’s effectiveness. Around 550 million Indians still use feature phones, which prevent them from using digital apps. While India had 450 million smartphone users in 2019, just 25% of its rural inhabitants had one. Computers were available to only 4% of Indians in rural regions and 23% in urban areas.
Internet access is also not widespread; slightly more than 34% of Indians have it.
The existing approach of requiring each recipient to register online for vaccination was discriminatory, and there has been a total disregard for digital barriers.