Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony announced on Wednesday that Guyana has signalled its interest in making use of software developed in India to keep track of the COVID-19 vaccination data.
This was disclosure was made during the minister’s daily COVID-19 briefing, where it was stated that the Government of India has decided to make the software that it has been using to keep records for its vaccination programme, available to countries that wished to make use of it.
It was explained that India has been doing mass vaccinations and to keep track of the amount of persons that have received vaccines on a daily basis, a software called ‘CoWIN’ was developed. “We are very much interested in it because we believe that it would help us to aggregate the numbers of from the different sites,” Anthony said.
However, the minister noted that record-keeping in Guyana as it relates to inoculation has been quite comprehensive as information including a person’s name, address, and contact number along with the type of vaccine received with the batch number and serial number recorded. “So we have very comprehensive information but the information is not in a user-friendly manner and that’s what this software is going to change.”
He also pointed out that Guyana has just about 100 vaccination sites and so an application would make compiling the data easy and as a result enable authorities to track vaccinations on an almost minute-by-minute basis as the software is designed to allow that. “Of course they will be customising it to suit our purposes in Guyana….”
The health minister further stated that just last week, there was an international engagement attended by a number of ministers from around the world pertaining to this software. And at this engagement, they were presented with details of the software.
“A number of ministers from around the globe participated in that meeting and there was a pledge from the Indian Government to make this software available. Since then we have been in contact with the Indian High Commission here and that project is moving along nicely,” Anthony was quoted as saying.
