Co-WIN can handle 10,000 transactions per second: RS Sharma

Even as Covid vaccination drives from mid-January have seen technical glitches slowing inoculation in various centres, Dr Ram Sewak Sharma, Chairman of Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to combat Covid-19, at a virtual session here on Friday said the Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) portal is ready to take on the increasing load of registering and scheduling beneficiaries in the days to come.

Sharma, who is also the Chief Executive Officer, National Health Authority, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, and member of National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration of Covid-19, spoke at a virtual session organised by the Public Affairs Forum of India.

Speaking on the issue of scalability of Covid vaccination he said, "We're doing 44 million transactions, as in vaccine records, every day. We did load testing of the system and could do 10,000 concurrent transactions per second. Currently, we are doing less than 300 per second, so there is absolutely no concern of a breakdown of the website."

In computing, an API or application programming interface is an interface that defines interactions between multiple software applications or mixed hardware-software intermediaries. Currently, one can register and schedule a vaccination slot in the Arogya Setu app which is linked with the Co-WIN portal.

"Co-WIN is API-based and our core component is issuing the vaccination certificate. While GoI will take care of it even in the coming days, the rest can be taken care of by the private sector. For example, the Apollo Hospital group can use their own registration and scheduling applications and send the data to us. APIs have been published. We've learnt from Aadhaar what can and cannot be decentralised," Sharma said.

Vaccination certificate as per global standards

He also spoke about the QR code-based vaccination certificate being generated by the Co-WIN portal after the first and the second dose. "Many ask me why their phone camera isn't able to read the QR code on their vaccination certificate. I have to explain to them that it is encrypted," he said.

"WHO is working on a standard which is called Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHRI). They are designing and working on the format of the digital certificate including various aspects that a digital certificate should contain and digital verifiability of the same. India since the beginning has aligned to it. As soon as they come up with the standard, we will be in full compliance with the FHRI standard. So, the digital certificate issued by India will be valid everywhere," he added.