The Union Health Ministry on Monday announced that on-site registration for 18-44 years age group has been enabled on the CoWin platform for all government COVID vaccination centres.
"…based on the various representations given by the states and inputs received by Union Health 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," an official 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 ArogyaSetu and Umang and through the Common Service Centres etc., people requiring cohort's facility and those without access to internet or smart phones or mobile phones may still have limited access for vaccination. Therefore, the feature of on-site registration and appointment is now being enabled for 18-44 years age group on CoWIN," it added.
However, the service is currently available for government-run vaccination centres only. Private centres will still need to follow the previous method of scheduling slots online.
With the launch of phase 2 of the national Covid-19 vaccination drive on March 1, this year, facility for only online registration and appointment of citizens aged 45 years or more was offered on CoWIN digital platform.
Later, under the implementation of the Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated National Covid-19 vaccination strategy, the Centre expanded the drive to include people in the age group of 18 to 44 years from May 1.
Further, the ministry also stated that the final decision will be of the state whether to offer this facility for 18-44 years or not.
"State/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 18-44 years. Also, abundant caution should be exercised and extreme due care should be taken while opening up of on-site registration… in order to avoid overcrowding at vaccination centres," the statement read.