Keypoints:
- After registering on the CoWin portal and selecting the slot, the person will receive a four digit security code.
- The person will have to show the security code at the vaccination centre to verify themselves.
Registered users have complained that they have been receiving vaccination certificate despite them not getting a vaccination shot. Due to this, the government has introduced a new security feature.
Here is what it means :
Anyone who has registered on the CoWin portal and has booked a slot, will receive a four digit security code which the users will have to produce it at the vaccination centre to verify themselves.
It was noticed by the Ministry of Health and Family welfare that in some instances, people had booked their slots for vaccination on the portal but they did not get their jabs on the scheduled date, but they still received an SMS notification that the dose has been administered to them.
After examining the situation, the ministry said that it was found that this happened “largely on account of the vaccinator wrongly marking the citizen as vaccinated”.
From Saturday onwards, the CoWin portal will roll out this feature where users will get their four digit security code to verify themselves when they reach the vaccination centre.
“After verification, if the beneficiary has been found as eligible, before administering the vaccine dose, the verifier/vaccinator will ask the beneficiary for the 4 digit code and then enter the same in the CoWIN portal to correctly record the vaccination status,” the government statement said.
For the ones who have booked an online appointment, it will ensure that data entries are recorded appropriately, and it will also reduce opportunities of “impersonation or wrongful use of flexibilities provided in CoWin for facilitating vaccination coverages”.
Security features like these have been used before by platform services to reduce abuse of their platform by service partners.
