Struggling to book a vaccine slot? Well, you may soon be able to register yourself for COVID-19 vaccination and book slots through third-party apps. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in its new guidelines revealed the integration of the Indian vaccination portal CoWIN with third-party applications.
Amid vaccine shortage and people finding it difficult to book a vaccine slot on CoWIN, this new set of guidelines is an update to the existing framework where developers were only able to offer information regarding the availability of slots and facilitate the download of vaccination certificates via their apps.
Developers will now be able to include the CoWIN API in their own apps, which will provide an in-app portal that will allow people to register themselves for the vaccination directly. This will be similar to what is currently available to users of the Aarogya Setu app.
Till now, the third-party applications were only working as notifiers and were giving information regarding the availability of vaccine slots in a selected region. The new guidelines released by the government and integration of third parties is definitely going to ease the slot booking process.
The new third-party apps that will join the CoWIN API will only be using the existing server used by the CoWIN portal and the Aarogya Setu app.
Apart from this, the registration process will be no different while using third-party apps. Users will require an Aadhaar Card, Driving License, PAN Card, Passport, Pension Passbook, NPR Smart Card or Voter ID to register themselves to book vaccine slots.