In a bid to minimise vaccine shortage and help those “without access to internet or smart phones”, on-site registration and appointment has now been enabled for the 18-44 years age group on the CoWin platform for Covid-19 vaccination.

However, this feature is being enabled only for Government Covid Vaccination Centers (CVCs) at present,  the Union Health Ministry said on Monday. This feature will not be available for private CVCs and they will have to publish their vaccination schedules exclusively with slots for online appointments.

And this feature will be used only upon decision of respective states and UT governments. States and UT must decide on opening of on-site registrations/facilitated cohorts’ registration and appointments for 18-44 years age group based on the local context just as an additional measure to minimize vaccine wastage and for facilitating vaccination of eligible beneficiaries in the age group of 18-44 years, the ministry said in its statement.

The coverage of vaccination was expanded to people in the age group of 18 to 44 years on May 1 with the implementation of the Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated National Covid-19 Vaccination Strategy.

The facility of only online appointment mode initially to people in the age group of 18 to 44 years helped avoid overcrowding at vaccination centres, the statement.

Based on various representations given by states and inputs received by ministry for the vaccination of 18-44 years age group, the Union government has now decided to provide facility of on-site registration/facilitated cohort registration on CoWIN digital platform for 18-44 years age group considering that in case of sessions exclusively organised with online slots, towards the end of the day, some doses may still be left unutilised in case the online appointee beneficiaries do not turn up on day of vaccination.

In such cases, on-site registration of a few beneficiaries may be necessary to minimise the vaccine wastage, the statement said.

Even though CoWIN provides for features such as registration of up to 4 beneficiaries with a mobile number, facilitated registration and appointments through applications, such as Arogya Setu and Umang and through the Common Service Centres etc., people requiring facilitated cohort’s facility and those without access to internet or smart phones or mobile phones may still have limited access for vaccination.