America ridiculed India for having CoWin. Now it is teaching its citizens to safeguard their ‘paper’ vaccine certificates

With every emergent Covid-19 wave, the United States somehow always manages to get ravaged. Despite the vaccination programme being on for more than a year now, the United States has not quite understood how the pandemic is to be dealt with, how hospitalisations are to be prevented, how normalcy is to be maintained and how people are to be saved. But then, for a country that has not even understood the best way of giving its citizens vaccination certificates, expecting it to deal with the pandemic effectively is quite an overstretch. You see, Americans today rely on their vaccination cards as if their lives depend on them.

And that has been causing a lot of trouble. The vaccination card being made available by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is peculiar in size. It does not fit in wallets and needs to be separately carried around. The vaccination campaign in the United States has been going on for over a year now. With time, people have lost and misplaced their 4.25-by-3.5-inch white vaccine cards. Once they realise that they’ve lost their cards, Americans are gripped with an all-consuming seizure of paranoia.

The Boon of Digitisation yet to Dawn upon the United States

The New York Times, which is infamous for publishing shoddy reports concerning India that almost always seem to incline with the ‘liberal’ narrative, decided to run an informative story recently. In a piece titled, “What to do if you’ve lost your Covid-19 vaccination card?”, NYT chose to educate Americans on how they need not panic upon losing their vaccine cards.

It then went on to explain a confusing and ambiguous, not to mention, an unsure way for Americans to get hold of new vaccine cards. NYT said that people who live in states that have made vaccine information available on digital dashboards are in luck, while those whose states are yet to embrace digitisation need to take a more hectic view of things.

NYT said that people who lose their Covid-19 cards can contact their doctors. But then, doctors might not have all the required information to fill in a new card. The publication then suggested Americans who lose their cards get in touch with their immunisation centres. Then too, such people might not really get new cards on first visits.

The United States of America – a superpower and a first world country is today struggling with a fundamental question. And that is the question of how physical cards can be preserved like treasure, and how, in the event that they get misplaced or stolen, new ones can be issued. All of America’s problems on this front will vanish if it decides to create a centralised Covid-19 dashboard like India, but that is unlikely to happen considering the technical illiteracy of those in power in Washington.

CoWin – An Example and Gift for the World

India’s vaccination programme is drawing laurels from countries that genuinely want to rid themselves of Covid-19. And such countries realise that the CoWin system can be a formidable tool for them. So, while the first world countries sulk in their corners upon witnessing India’s tremendous success, at least 50 countries from across Central Asia, Latin America and Africa have expressed their interest in gaining technological insight from India, specifically with the CoWin portal.

The CoWin platform is helping India avoid chaotic scenes at vaccination centres, unlike in other countries, where people are having to reach the vaccination centres, get exposed to large crowds, be pushed and shoved around and finally end up being told that the jabs at the given centre have been exhausted.

Here’s how CoWin works:

• Upon vaccination, a certificate is generated via the CoWin portal.

• This certificate will either be provisional, in case only the first dose has been administered, or it will be ‘final’ when both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered.

• This certificate can be verified from anywhere in the world. For verification of the certificate, one must visit the CoWin portal (www.cowin.gov.in). On the home page itself, a ‘Verify Certificate’ option is seen next to the ‘Book Your Slot’ option.
• Upon clicking the ‘Verify Certificate’ option, a QR code scanner pops up, which is when one is required to scan the QR code displayed on his/her certificate. If the certificate is legitimate, the CoWin portal will immediately display that the certificate is verified.

Read more: Modi govt’s plan to make Unique Health ID for patients will revolutionise healthcare in India

Meanwhile, even as all those vaccinated in India are given a physical copy of their certificates at the immunisation centre, almost everybody in the country today relies on digital forms of their certificates – which can be availed by shooting off a simple SMS from one’s registered mobile number.

Americans, however, are not one SMS away from a digital vaccine certificate, thanks to the glaring incompetence of their government to create a CoWin-like portal that can be used across the country. India can become an example for the United States. Surely the Modi government will be more than willing to share its digital expertise with Washington D.C. – but America must be willing to learn to become a part of the India-led global digital renaissance.