COVID-19 vaccination drive is beginning from Saturday, 16th January 2021. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting with senior officials to review the COVID-19 situation in the country and finalize vaccine roll-out details.
Priority will be given to around one crore healthcare workers and two crore frontline staff, like doctors, community health workers and police, who are directly involved in fighting the pandemic. The vaccine will be free of cost for this group.
The next priority group will be people over 50, followed by those under 50 but with co-morbidities.
The total number of people expected to be vaccinated in the first phase is around 30 crore.
CoWIN app (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) and its ecosystem would be used to manage the massive vaccination drive.
The app has yet to be launched but will use Aadhaar numbers to authenticate vaccine beneficiaries and send text messages – in at least 12 languages – with details of vaccination date and time.
For the initial phase it will auto-populate data for citizens over 50 from electoral rolls.
Once the CoWIN app is launched and the general public can access it, there will be three registration options – self, individual (an official will help in uploading data) and bulk upload.