The Centre is going to extend the modes of vaccination enrollment further as it will include 1075 helpline as a platform where people can register themselves to avail the vaccination against Covid-19, top government officials told The Statesman.
The service is the latest addition to the modes of vaccine enrollment allowed by the union government, which is expected to start by Thursday, they added.
Dr RS Sharma, CEO of National Health Authority (NHA) confirmed this to The Statesman.
“Yes, we are going to start the on-call service of vaccination registration. The people who don’t own a smartphone will now be able to enrol themselves by calling just calling on the Covid-19 helpline number,” he said.
Sharma also informed that the service will be started by or before Thursday as well. “Our decision to activate the 1075 Covid-19 will be implemented in a day or two,” he added.
The NHA’s CEO believes that the latest mode of registration will bring more accessibility to the national Covid-19 immunisation programme and would also lead to better turnout.
So far, the union government has allowed two modes–digital and walk-in—through which citizens can register themselves to receive the Covid-19 vaccines. The telephonic medium would be the third platform available to the people for vaccination registration.
The move is expected to give relief to those marginalised sections of society who neither have internet accessibility nor own a smartphone.
The Centre has provided the vaccination enrollment via the CoWIN platform that can be accessed at http://www.cowin.gov.in or one can also head over to either Aarogya Setu and UMANG application (mobile) to get registered. Both the applications have integration with the CoWIN portal.