CoWIN adds 4-digit security code for online booking of vaccine from 8 May

May 8: The Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Friday came up with an important notification regarding booking of online slot of Covid vaccine. A new 4-digit security code feature has been added to the CoWIN vaccination registration portal to minimise errors for online bookings/ appointments.

Informing this, the MOHFW stated, “It has been noted in some instances that citizens had booked their appointments for COVID vaccination through the CoWIN portal, but did not actually go for vaccination on the scheduled date, have received notification through SMS that a vaccine dose has been administered to them. Upon examination, it has been found to occur largely on account of the vaccinator wrongly marking the citizen as vaccinated, that is, an instance of data entry error by the administrator.”

In order to minimise such errors and the subsequent inconvenience caused to the citizens, the CoWIN system is introducing a new feature of “4 digit security code” in the CoWIN application from 8 May, 2021. Now, after verification, if the beneficiary has been found as eligible, before administering the vaccine dose, the verifier/ vaccinator will ask the beneficiary about his/her 4 digit code and then enter the same in the CoWIN system to correctly record the vaccination status.