A shortcoming in the COWIN app is failing at preventing recently recovered Covid-19 patients from taking the vaccine shots despite the government’s three-month hiatus, revealed a study by India Today.
A 26-year-old man, a resident of Delhi had just recovered from about of Covid-19 on April 30 and were eagerly waiting to get vaccinated in order to protect their family.
It was then that the Union health ministry issued fresh guidelines on May 19 to all states and UTs stating that people who have recovered from Covid-19 recently, should wait for at least three months before taking their vaccine shots.
Despite the govt’s mandate, the father-son duo decided to get vaccinated and registered on the COWIN App. To their surprise, while registering for the vaccination slot there was no mechanism in the digital platform that barred them from taking the shots on the ground that they had just recovered from Covid-19 and they were easily able to get a vaccination slot for May 24.
Talking to India Today, the young man said that no one enquired about their Covid-19 status or stopped them at the vaccination centre even though he had used his Aadhar card at the time of taking the RT-PCR test as well as while registering on CoWIN.
Notably, this was not the first case when a Covid recovered person was able to get a Covid jab despite govt’s 3-month hiatus.
A Thirty-three-year-old resident of Noida was also able to get vaccinated at a government vaccination centre in the city in a similar manner. The patient had recovered from Covid-19 on May 9 and was able to get the vaccine shot on May 21 without much enquiry.
Similarly, many more such cases were brought to the fore whereby Covid recovered patients were able to get vaccinated in gross violation of the govt’s rule.
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As a result, many people are raising concerns and demanding that the CoWIN platform should have a feature that detects a person’s Covid-19 recovery status and determines their eligibility for vaccination.
Besides many are also facing difficulties deciding when they should get vaccinated. Deliberating on this issue, a member of a Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) in Delhi’s Greater Kailash-1 told India Today that since the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recently recommended people not to take an RT-PCR test to check their negative status, there is no clarity from which date one should calculate the three-month period.
The rationale behind the government’s three-month wait rule was that a recovered person has enough antibodies that would protect them against re-infection for at least three months. Hence, delaying their vaccination would ensure that others who are at risk of contracting the disease, get protected.
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