Fact Check: Are beneficiaries being registered as double vaccinated without two jabs?

The Union health ministry, in its clarification issued on February 3, has refuted some international media reports claiming that beneficiaries are being registered as double vaccinated without receiving both Covid vaccine doses. Calling the reports ill-informed, baseless and misleading, the ministry said that this can't be the case as it is the health workers themselves that enter vaccination event data in the CoWIN system. The reports even alleged that 50 lakhs unused Covishield doses may go waste by February-end, a claim which has also been rejected by the government.

Authors don't understand the vaccination process: Centre

Issuing clarification over the aforementioned misinformation, the Central ministry said, "The authors perhaps are not aware that it is the health workers themselves that enter vaccination event data in the Co-WIN system. The claim of the authors that the very health workers who enter the data have alleged irregularities, indicates that the authors do not have any understanding of the processes of vaccination event recording on Co-WIN". A platform that has supported the world's largest vaccination drive has performed exceptionally and all covid vaccinations are recorded on CoWin, the ministry said.

Further refuting the claims, the Centre stated that the platform has been equipped with necessary features and flexibility along with SOPs to prevent fraudulent or wrong data entry at the time of vaccination. According to the statement, there is a verifier in every team whose sole purpose is to establish the identity of the beneficiaries. It further added that the vaccination process has several steps before a beneficiary is recorded as vaccinated in Co-WIN, which establishes the beneficiary's identity before marking him as vaccinated. 

"It needs to be appreciated that even with its very large population, India has successfully implemented its nationwide COVID vaccination programme and administered more than 167 crore doses as on date, covering more than 76 per cent of the eligible population above 18 years with both the doses," the ministry said in its statement. It rejected another claim by media reports alleging that 50 lakh unused Covishield doses may go waste by February-end. "Such reports are vague, without any specific information on the state wise number of doses that are claimed to be near expiry date", the Centre clarified. 

Image: PTI