Update: National Health Authority CEO RS Sharma who also heads the Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration responded to MediaNama's queries. We are listing out his responses below along with our questions. Question 1: MediaNama was able to verify few cases wherein the owner of a certain phone number had no idea that a person, stranger to them, had registered themselves for vaccination on their number. Sir, are you aware of such complaints from citizens? RS Sharma: Such cases were reported from CoWIN 1.0 wherein data collection was done through Excel Sheet for healthcare workers and frontline workers. Registration of multiple beneficiaries with one number was done -- like ASHA workers who don’t have mobile number will utilise mobile number of ANM or medical officer for registration. The CoWIN 2.0 platform provides for registration of up to 4 persons with a mobile number. This facility is kept to facilitate vaccination wherein no member of family owns a mobile phone. In which case, the family can take help of friends and family for registration on CoWIN. The CoWIN system does have the security features in place to ensure that mobile number of someone is not used by anybody else for registration without consent. Yes, some such instances have been noticed in the past. On inquiry, it has been understood that the vaccinators and verifiers while doing on-site registration of beneficiaries made these errors. I would like to assure you that the security measures in place in CoWIN, do not allow anyone to…
