Question : Fake Vaccination Certificates

(a) whether the Government has noticed any cases of fraud in the administration of COVID-19 vaccines and issuance of vaccination certificates, if so, the details thereof;
(b) whether the Government is aware of cases where people are officially registered as double vaccinated before receiving both doses because of pressure to meet targets, if so, the details thereof
(c) whether the Government has investigated claims that vaccine certificate were issued to increase vaccination numbers, if so, the details thereof and action taken therein;
(d) whether every vaccine team has a verifier, if so, the details thereof and the methods followed to identify those being vaccinated;
(e) whether the Government has assessed the efficacy of the said method, if so, the details thereof; and
(f) the measures taken by the Government to prevent such data tampering by including features and standard operating procedures in the CoWIN portal to prevent wrong data entry?

THE MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND FAMILY WELFARE
(DR. BHARATI PRAVIN PAWAR)

(a) to (e) Operational guidelines issued to the States/UTs include the necessary steps to be followed for verification and vaccination. Necessary orientation of the vaccination teams has been done on the process of vaccination. No state has reported such instances of irregularities in the administration of COVID-19 vaccination.
Every Covid vaccination team has a verifier, who verifies the registered beneficiaries through any one of the prescribed Photo Identity Card documents (like AADHAAR Card, Driving License, PAN Card, Passport, Pension Passbook, National Population Register Smart Card, Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC), Unique Disability Identification Card (UDID), Ration Card with Photo or Student Photo Identity card). These are standard methods of verification.

(f) The Standard Operating Procedure and features that have been incorporated in Co-WIN to prevent fraudulent and/or wrong data entry at time of vaccination are (i) Online or onsite registration as prerequisite for vaccination (ii) Every vaccination team has a verifier to establish the identity of the beneficiaries using photo Identity card (iii) vaccination is recorded on Co-WIN Portal by the verifier/vaccinator only after verification (iv) for onsite registration and first dose vaccination addition verification is done through OTP sent on the registered mobile number (v) There is an option to do a Aadhaar based authentication if Aadhaar is provided (vi) In case the other photo identity card are provided the verifier/vaccinator has the option to capture the picture of the photo identity (vii) For onsite 2nd dose the verifier/vaccinator can search the beneficiary from CoWIN database and Post successful verification, the beneficiary needs to provide her/his year of birth and secret code which is available only on the beneficiary dashboard and the SMS sent to the beneficiary (viii) SMS notifications are sent to beneficiary at every stage of vaccination process (ix) grievance redressal mechanism in place for taking any corrective measure if required (x) beneficiaries have been empowered to make specific corrections in their records on CoWIN portal (xi) In case of wrong data entry beneficiary can revoke vaccination status by changing Precaution dose to fully vaccinated, from fully to partially vaccinated, and from partially to not vaccinated.

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