New Delhi, February 28: States and districts will be required to pre-register COVID-19 Vaccination Centres (CVCs) on the Co-WIN2.0 portal before the registration is opened for people above 60 years and those aged 45 and above with co-morbidities so that the list of CVCs is available to the citizens, the Union Health Ministry said.

The registration begins from March 1 at 9 am. The eligible beneficiaries can choose the centre of their choice and book an appointment based on the slots available.

According to a guidance note on Co-WIN2.0 issued by the Health Ministry, states and UTs will decide the target number of doses to be administered in a vaccination cycle, based on already available vaccine doses and additional doses likely to be available in a vaccination cycle.

As far as vaccination slots are concerned, these can be further classified as mobilization slots and open slots. Mobilization slots are those for which respective states and UT government shall mobilize beneficiaries for on-site registration, appointment, verification and vaccination (all on-site on the same day). 2nd Phase of COVID-19 Vaccination to Begin in India From March 1; CoWIN Registration From 9am Tomorrow; Know More Details Here.

There will not be any need for pre-registering beneficiaries through online interface for this. Proportion of such slots will be decided by respective state and UT government.

Open slots will be open for online appointments by general citizens. The number of Open Slots for a session will be worked out by subtracting the number of reserved slots from the CVC session capacity, the guidance document said.

"It is recommended that, to begin with, one particular COVID-19 Vaccination Centre (CVC) may be either fully reserved or their full capacity is opened for online self-appointment, to avoid the confusion and problems in physical queue management on site at the CVC," the document stated.

If it is so decided that a CVC will have both the reserved and the open slots, session timings for open slots may be carefully selected to avoid overlap of beneficiaries between the ones coming through online appointment and the ones being mobilized for mobilization slots, it said. The timings for on-site registrations in such a case should also be carefully publicized.

Since, when a beneficiary is being vaccinated with first dose, COWIN will automatically confirm the appointment of the beneficiary for the 2nd dose at the same vaccination centre, the target number of doses should be decided with careful consideration of available stocks and requirement of vaccine stocks for 2nd dose vaccinations for the already partly vaccinated beneficiaries.

Citizens will be able to register at www.cowin.gov.in and book an appointment for vaccination using the portal or through other IT applications such as Arogya Setu.  They will be able to register at the Co-WIN portal through their mobile number, said the ministry as it also released an user manual to handhold the citizens to register and schedule an appointment for vaccination.

An OTP verification will be done prior to registration to ensure veracity of the mobile number and after registration, an account will be created on Co-WIN for the person. The person can access (login) his/her account on Co-WIN using the mobile phone number used at the time of registration. Features for adding beneficiaries, editing their details and for booking appointment(s) will be available in the citizen's account, the document stated. The citizen can delete only beneficiaries as have been added by him/her.

"If one out of the four beneficiaries registered in an account is vaccinated, only three registrations are left, and so on. "Till the time of vaccination, all the records of registration and appointment can be edited/deleted by the person making the registration. Only when a person gets vaccinated, the record is locked and cannot be edited/deleted," the ministry said.

The beneficiary then has to select the ID card type and provide ID card number.  The photo ID card number for each such beneficiary must be different. Either of the following photo identity documents can be used by citizens for availing of online registration -- Aadhaar Card/Letter, Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC), passport, driving license, PAN Card, NPR Smart Card or pension document with photograph. COVID-19 Vaccination in India: States and UTs Explained Features of Co-WIN 2.0 Along With Process of Advance Self Registration, On-Site Registration and More.

If the age of the beneficiary is from 45 years to 59 years, the beneficiary will be prompted to confirm if he/she has any specified comorbidity. In such cases, the beneficiary will also be advised to bring the comorbidity certificate signed by a registered medical practitioner.

Once all the necessary details are recorded by the beneficiary, registration is completed and an acknowledgement (registration slip/token) will be sent to beneficiary on his registered mobile number. Facility for downloading and printing etc. will also be available.

"The new phase of vaccination of age-appropriate groups will expand the COVID vaccination in the country manifold. With a citizen-centric approach, the fundamental shift in this phase is that citizens in the identified age groups, as also those healthcare workers and frontline who have been missed out or left out of the present phase of vaccination, can select vaccination centres of their choice," the ministry had said.

A COVID-19 Vaccination Time Table (VTT) (for each vaccination centre) will be published by the states/districts, on Co-WIN  and any beneficiary will be able to choose and book a slot for vaccination at the CVCs declared in the VTT, anytime and anywhere, based on hisher preference and convenience.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)