Organisations can check COVID19 vaccination status of their employees through CoWIN’s new feature
The central government has launched a new feature which will enable organisations to know about the vaccination status of their employees. The government claims this will help resume socio-economic activities faster while ensuring everyone’s safety.
COVID vaccination centre in rural Chhattisgarh. Photo: @Nyksindia/twitter
The central government’s CoWIN has launched a new application programming interface (API) that is expected to make it easier for organisations and institutions to know the vaccination status of their employees, associates, and customers.
Termed as ‘Know Your Customer’s/Client’s Vaccination Status’ (KYC-VS) is both consent-based and privacy preserving, claimed the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, which operates CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Work), a web portal for COVID19 vaccination registration.
“As the socio-economic activities are being gradually revived while maintaining everyone’s safety, there is a need for a way to digitally convey the status of individuals’ vaccination to entities with whom they may be engaging with for any or all reasons, as employees, passengers, residents etc.,” read the government statement dated September 10.
The government stated that an employer may like to know the vaccination status of its employees to resume functions in workplaces, the airlines and railways may want to get the status of vaccination of the passengers, airports may only want to allow vaccinated passengers to pass through, and hotels may want to know the vaccination status of the residents at the time they are checking into the hotel, or at the time of making online bookings.
Therefore, the government decided, “there is a need to enable an Aadhaar like authentication service for the status of vaccination through Co-WIN”.
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To use this API, an individual needs to enter their mobile number and name. Thereafter, they will get a One Time Password (OTP) which they have to enter. In return, Co-WIN will send a response to the verifying entity on the individual’s status of vaccination, which will be as follows –
0 – Person is not vaccinated
1 – Person is partially vaccinated
2 – Person is fully vaccinated
This response will be digitally signed and can be shared instantly with the verifying entity.