The CoWin System will introduce a four-digit security code starting from 8 May 2021 to minimise data entry errors which has caused inconvenience to the citizens.
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), in a statement, said , "It has been noticed in some instances that citizens that had booked their appointment for COVID vaccination through the CoWIN portal, but did not actually go for vaccination on the scheduled date, have received notification through SMS that a vaccine dose has been administered to them."
MoHFW said that upon examination, it has been found to occur largely on account of the vaccinator wrongly marking the citizen as vaccinated.
“In order to minimise such errors and the subsequent inconvenience caused to the citizens, the CoWIN system is introducing a new feature of ‘4-digit security code’ in the CoWIN application from 8 May 2021,” the ministry said.
"After verification if the beneficiary has been found as eligible, before administering the vaccine dose, the verifier/vaccinator will ask beneficiary about his/her 4 digit code and then enter the same in the CoWIN system to correctly record the vaccination status," the ministry informed.
This feature will only be applicable for citizens who have done an online booking for a vaccination slot. The four-digit security code will be printed in the appointment acknowledgement slip and will not be known to the vaccinator.
Citizens will now have to provide the security code to the vaccinator as the digital certificate will be generated only after the vaccination record has been updated with the security code.
This will reduce the opportunities of impersonation and wrongful use of flexibilities provided in CoWIN for facilitating vaccination coverage.
(With inputs from PTI)
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