CoWIN now has feature for rescheduling of vaccination sessions

New Delhi, June 01: Government of India has been supporting the efforts of States and UTs towards vaccinating all people aged 18 years and above with priority being given to the Healthcare and Frontline Workers. CoWIN has been developed as a platform to manage vaccinations across the country.

There have been some media reports suggesting that even a successful booking on the CoWIN platform for a vaccination slot does not assure one of a Covid-19 vaccine jab. These reports are baseless and incorrect, not supported by full information on the matter.

Co-WIN platform facilitates registration (in both online & on-site modes), scheduling of appointments, vaccination & certification of beneficiary during COVID-19 vaccination process, the Ministry of Health said.

Availability of slots on Co-WIN Portal is based on the vaccination schedule published by District Immunisation Officer (DIO)/Session site in-charge which in turn depends upon availability of vaccines.

States/UTs have been advised that they should publish vaccination slots based on the availability of vaccines. The Union Government has also instructed all States/UTs to give preference to beneficiaries with online appointments than to on-site registrations.

It was noticed that in some cases the DIOs were publishing a session and then in case vaccines were in short supply, the DIOs used to cancel such sessions or return the beneficiaries. This definitely caused inconvenience to such beneficiaries who booked their appointments for such vaccination centres/ sessions.

To remove this problem, CoWIN has now provided the feature for rescheduling of vaccination sessions so that the DIO does not have to cancel the sessions. Provision has also been made that pre-booked appointments for a session, also get rescheduled when a session is rescheduled.

In such cases now the beneficiary shall not have taken a fresh appointment. The beneficiaries shall also receive an SMS informing them about rescheduling of their session. The system still provides the option of rescheduling/ cancellation of an appointment to the beneficiaries.