COWIN portal in Hindi, 14 other languages soon

The COWIN platform, which is the backbone of the Covid-19 vaccine delivery system in the country, will be made available in Hindi and 14 regional languages by next week, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said on Monday.

The official made the announcement at a high-level meeting chaired by Union health minister Harsh Vardhan with a group of ministers on the Covid situation.

“This was in the pipeline for some time keeping in mind the convenience of people who are not comfortable with the English language. The portal will be tweaked accordingly,” a government official familiar with the developments said, requesting anonymity.

Vardhan, meanwhile, told the meeting that the Centre has decided to add 17 more laboratories to the Indian Sars-cov-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) to scale up genome sequencing of samples of Covid-19 patients, taking the network of advanced laboratories to 27 across the country.

“Seventeen new labs are going to be added to the INSACOG network to increase the number of samples screened and allow for more spatial analysis. The network is presently served by 10 labs located at different corners of the country,” he said.

According to the INSACOG data shared by the government till May 5, 18,453 samples were genome sequenced of which 3,532 were found to be variants of concern.

The United Kingdom-identified variant, B.1.1.7 lineage, was found predominant in samples collected in Punjab and Chandigarh between February and March this year.

India’s Covid-19 testing capacity has also been scaled up to 2.5 million per day amid a surge in cases.