In addition to the acute vaccine shortage faced by most components of the nation, a further hurdle in the country’s Covid-19 vaccination programme is the difficulty in expanding vaccination in the hinterlands of the nation exactly where a huge population does not have the suggests to register on the government’s CoWin on the internet platform. Responding to the Supreme Court’s query on the similar, the central government stated that the residents of rural and semi-urban places who do not have smartphone or web could make use of the Common Service Centres (CSC) to register for their vaccine slot.
However, as per an Indian Express write-up, most CSCs stay dysfunctional and the share of vaccine slots registered from CSC remains negligible. Out of more than 3 lakh current Common Service Centres in the nation only 54,460 have been active on May 11 depriving a huge quantity of men and women in rural places of the wherewithal to register for their vaccine slot. The quantity of vaccine slots registered by these 54k odd CSCs is also negligible at 1.7 lakh out of more than 17 crore folks who have at least got one dose of the vaccine in the nation.
The states with huge rural population such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have also not reported a lot of vaccine slot registrations from the CSCs. The total share of vaccine slots registered from the CSCs in these states was significantly less than a fraction of 1 % in all these states.
CEO of the National Health Authority, which is in-charge of the vaccine CoWin platform R S Sharma told the Indian Express that CSCs are of intense significance in the Covid-19 vaccination drive. Officials also told the Indian Express that the causes behind closure of a huge quantity of CSCs was the lockdown-like restrictions imposed by various state governments. Officials also stated that the CSCs had also got the mandate to register on the CoWin platform only 3 weeks back when restrictions had currently been imposed.
Dinesh Kumar Tyagi who is the Managing Director of CSCs told the Indian Express that the CoWin platform has been integrated with the CSCs relatively lately and men and women who did not have a smartphone can come and register at CSCs. Officials also stated that rumours surrounding the side-effects of vaccines, pricing and vaccine hesitancy amongst the rural people was also one of the causes behind significantly less registrations.