Self-registration for comorbid people to get Covid vaccines?

BENGALURU: India, which faces the daunting task of identifying high-risk people with

comorbidities

— not all states have data on such population — whom it will have to inoculate after

healthcare

and frontline workers get

vaccines

, may consider allowing individuals to self-declare comorbidities to get the shot in the arm.

Part of India’s preparations to deliver vaccines is to e-tag them: Vaccines will be tagged and tracked electronically from the place of origin (ports/pharma firms) up to the person receiving the dose. This will be enabled by the CO-WIN app, which is an upgraded version of the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) initiative used for other immunisation programmes since 2015.

While eVIN tracked vaccines up to the

cold chain

, CO-WIN will track them to the last mile: Every person receiving a vaccine will get an SMS with details of the date, venue and time of

vaccination

and even the name of the vaccinator. After vaccination, the app will also generate certificates.

Beneficiary data for the first two rounds of inoculation will be entered onto CO-WIN by state authorities, while data of those from the third round, which will prioritise comorbid people, may see individuals self-registering.

“As part of the upgrade, an option allowing individuals to self-register, declaring their comorbidities has been included in CO-WIN. Local officials will authenticate such applications before considering the person for vaccination. However, this option remains disabled at the moment as governments will enter data of healthcare workers,” Arundathi Chandrashekar, one of the mission directors of the National Health Mission (NHM), which will spearhead the vaccination drive, told TOI.

The government has still kept the option of collecting data of persons with comorbidities and uploading them on CO-WIN as bulk entries, but this would require massive data from across the states, which may not be viable within dedicated timelines.

“In case such data is unavailable and/or any surveys planned are not complete, the government is likely to allow self registration. But things are still very fluid, and a committee at the central level is deliberating various options,” Arundathi said, adding that the Centre will decide the modalities.

Up to 20% May Be Comorbid

While no final decision has been made on how to identify people with comorbidities yet, experts part of ICMR and other government of India committees TOI spoke with said various options, including self-declaration by people, using the NCD (non-communicable diseases) national database, door-to-door survey findings done in states like Karnataka and Mumbai region may be considered by the government.

“According to estimates, 15% to 20% of the population may have comorbidities. The NCD data is not complete and has only passive enrolments which started October 2019 and only a third of all data has been digitised so far. We’ll soon be starting an active survey and the target to cover the entire population is 2022. Apart from this, we are likely to include additional fields in the family surveys to be conducted by the health department to include options to enter commodities,” Arundhati added.

Aside from NCD data, some states like Karnataka are looking at including additional fields for comorbidities as part of the National Family Survey. “Everything will depend on the GoI guidelines,” Arundathi said.

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