A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation’s vaccination drive by taking the Covid-19 vaccine, a battery of politicians cutting across party lines and VIPs from various walks of life came forward to inoculate themselves on the second day of the second phase of the vaccination programme aimed to cover persons over 60 years of age and those between 45-59 years with co-morbidities.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and his wife took the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine at the Delhi Heart and Lung Institute on Tuesday. Soon after getting vaccinated, the Minister said, “I request everyone to get vaccinated. After 28 days of the first dose, everyone should get their second dose. Do not worry if you experience minor side-effects, but do let your doctors know.”
Speaking about the CoWin platform, he also said, “There were some glitches in the CoWIN platform due to the high number of registrations all of a sudden. On Monday around 34 lakhs people had registered on this platform till last night. The number of people registering for the vaccination is increasing rapidly.”
He added, “I would like to request all hospitals to update the schedule for 28 days so that people don’t face any issue. The Government is ensuring the availability of the vaccine for the whole country so that everyone can get vaccinated.”
The others who got inoculated on Tuesday included Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh who received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine at RR Hospital in the national capital while Union Minister of Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi received the first shot of Covid-19 vaccine at Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also took the anti Covid-19 shot in Patna for which he paid `250
As many as 2,08,791 people above 60 years of age and those aged 45-60 years with comorbidities have taken the first dose of the vaccine, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told the weekly press conference here.
Those with specified comorbidities will have to produce a medical certificate attested by a registered medical practitioner at the time of vaccination at the Covid-19 vaccination centre. This phase is likely to cover close to 270 million beneficiaries.
Beneficiaries will have to register on the Co-Win website and book an appointment for vaccination. There is also an option for booking a walk-in appointment after registration.
While Government hospitals will provide the vaccine free of charge, the price has been kept at `250 per dose in private hospitals.
R S Sharma, the Chairman of the Empowered Group (EG) on COVID-19 Vaccine Administration, said there were no glitches in the system.
What happened was that people were looking for an App on Playstore which appeared similar to Co-WIN and started using that, when no mobile App meant for registration is actually present right now, he said.
“Since last morning, when the registrations were opened up at 9 am, we had about 50 lakh registrations on our site. Though there were some glitches in the first version of the Co-WIN which was launched on January 16, we have had no glitches in the new version of the system,” he said.
The number of transactions and data transmission will be very large, he said adding that “We want data to be secure and free from cyber-attacks. We are taking best security practices. We are only collecting data in the form of name, age and gender as we need to monitor the second dose.”
Total number of hospitals which are involved in this job are 26,000-27,000. There are 12,500 private hospitals, Sharma added.