India has embarked on a mass vaccination campaign with millions of persons inoculated to date.
However, to track the number of vaccines administered daily and to identify trends, the country has developed a software to generate data from vaccination sites. That software is called ‘CoWin’, and Guyana is expected to have that programme installed soon at the Health Ministry. This was revealed today by Guyana’s Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony.
“The Government of India has decided that they want to make the software available to countries…And they have made such an offer to Government of Guyana. We are very much interested in it, because we believe that it would help us to aggregate the numbers from the different vaccination sites – currently we have 100 sites. So, it would make aggregating the numbers easily, and we would be able to track almost on a minute-by-minute basis how the vaccination is going,” the minister said.
During a recent conclave, Dr. Anthony said that his ministry was given all the technical details of the software.
“A number of ministers from around the globe participated in that meeting and there was a pledge from the Indian Government to make the software available. Since then, we’ve been in contact with the High Commissioner here, and that project is moving along nicely. We anticipate that we’ll be able to get that software into Guyana and start utilizing it,” he added.
The Minister noted that notwithstanding the use of manual input in Guyana, the country’s recordkeeping is “quite comprehensive”. However, the data is not user-friendly. He said that the CoWin will be able to receive the data, reorganize it based on inputted requirements, and display the information to assist the ministry in formulating strategies.
“Not only do we have the name of the person, address and telephone number, and so forth, but we’ve also been tracking the vaccine type, batch number, serial number and a whole host of other technical things that are required. So, we have very comprehensive information, but the information is not in a user-friendly manner, and that’s what this software is going to change.
