India mulls 'touchless’ Covid vaccination process

Even as India's vaccination process to combat a worryingly resurgent Covid-19 pandemic is under criticism for being too slow and conservative, the Indian government is trying its bit to breathe fresh life into the whole process.

The third phase of the vaccination drive is on India, and the government recently amped up the Co-WIN app, which is the nodal system to handle the Covid vaccination process in India.

Simultaneously, the government is said to be a mulling a facial recognition system to do away with biometric fingerprint or iris scan machines at vaccination centres to avoid infections.

The government is down at work to check the authenticity of facial recognition using Aadhaar data.

To be rolled out to the nation soon

The online news portal The Print, quoting the National Health Authority CEO R S Sharma said the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the Aadhaar project, has deployed the best facial recognition algorithms into the project.

“We have started a pilot in Jharkhand which is reporting more than 1,000 successful authentications via facial recognition on a daily basis at the vaccination sites,” Sharma, who is also the chairperson of the empowered committee for the administration of Covid vaccination, was quoted as saying.

Once the government does about 50,000 to 60,000 facial authentications under the pilot, it will be rolled out across the nation.

The whole idea is to make the vaccination process touchless and increase people's confidence in the process so that it reports higher numbers,

There is a certain misgiving at vaccination centres now as people have to touch fingers at the machine for the biometric authentication.

The touchless vaccination process can help allay those fears.

As of now, daily vaccination in India is pegged around the 30 lakh mark. This is expected to nearly double in the coming days.

In India, anyone above the age of 45 is eligible for the Covid vaccine.