CoWIN: The 'Made in India' global solution

India gave the world ‘zero’ and its invention was a significant mathematical development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics, engineering and much of modern technology possible. Now, India is all set to give the world yet another tool to help eradicate the coronavirus.

CoWIN or Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network which has been an application crucial to the massive vaccination drive in India is going global as over 50 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Panama, have expressed interest in adopting the technology. The government is set to create an open-source version of the application to let other countries use it free of cost.

Chairman of the empowered group on Covid vaccine delivery platform RS Sharma said the government was gearing up to help those who have sought CoWIN technology.

Built for scale, CoWIN glided through the incoming traffic on June 21, 2021, when India launched a free vaccine for all adults drive and the application hit a peak of 1.83 million API calls per minute at 12:04 pm, which means handling over 30,000 API calls per second.

However, the application has not been free of controversy. From initial hurdles with the application to the new I-T portal facing similar issues, technical glitches have been a hurdle in India’s digital journey. In the early days, glitches in the functioning of the CoWIN app foiled the plans to vaccinate the population. Cumulative vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed 33.1 crore so far, shows government data.

But that is in the past. India is at the cusp of a digital transformation and it is time that it steps up and celebrates its digital journey and works towards achieving the idea of ‘Digital India’ for the world. That being said, stakeholders must ensure that there are no glitches in the software before it is made available to all.