NEW DELHI, May 7: A new security feature has been added to the CoWin portal after some users complained of their vaccination certificate being generated despite them not getting a jab.
As per the new feature starting Saturday, anyone who has registered on the CoWin portal and selected a slot for vaccination will get a four-digit security code that they will have to produce at the vaccination centre to verify themselves.
According to a statement by the union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, it was noticed that in some instances those who had booked their appointment for vaccination through the CoWin portal did not go to get their jabs on the scheduled date but still received a notification through SMS that a dose has been administered to them.
The ministry said that upon examination, it was found that this happened “largely on account of the vaccinator wrongly marking the citizen as vaccinated”.
Under the new feature, the portal will send a four-digit security code will be provided to the beneficiary. “After verification, if the beneficiary has been found as eligible, before administering the vaccine dose, the verifier/vaccinator will ask the beneficiary for the 4 digit code and then enter the same in the CoWin portal to correctly record the vaccination status,” the government statement said.
This, it said, will ensure for those booking an online appointment, data entries are recorded correctly, and it will reduce opportunities of “impersonation or wrongful use of flexibilities provided in CoWin for facilitating vaccination coverage.”
(Manas Dasgupta)