Paytm, Infosys provides support to India in COVID vaccine reserves: Report | Coronavirus pandemic News

Reuters reports that 15 state agencies and private companies, including the health giants Apollo and Max, are seeking approval.

Paytm, Infosys and MakeMyTrip are among the companies seeking approval to offer COVID-19 vaccine bookings in India, the head of the government’s technology platform said, as the country tries to make it easier to book plans for its huge population.

The government relaxed the rules last month to allow vaccine reserves to be offered to third-party applications, and states have taken control of recruitment after delays and shortages. He also had initial problems with his vaccine booking platform.

About 15 state agencies and private companies, including Apollo and Max India’s health giants and 1mg online pharmacies, have applied for permission to offer vaccine reserves, Re Sharuters, the head of the government panel that manages the CoWIN vaccine registration platform, said. news agency.

SoftBank-sponsored digital payment application Paytm has more than 100 million active users per month and MakeMyTrip 12 million.

Their popularity offers more opportunities for Indians who want to book COVID-19 planes, especially if they are struggling with an unknown government platform.

“It will work for the country, the unity of all organizations is better than a single individual platform,” Sharma said.

Rajesh Magow, CEO of MakeMyTrip, said the company wants to help people book their vaccine slots. 1mg said it was awaiting government approval. Apollo declined to comment, while Paytm, Infosys and Max did not respond to questions from Reuters.

Reuters reports that only 3.5% of India’s 1.3 billion population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Indian health officials say the pace should be increased to prevent further deadly rise in the virus, as it plunged the country earlier this year.

Although the supply of vaccines will depend on the scarcity of supplies, experts say more options for bookings should help.

Several software developers are using publicly available encoding for the CoWIN platform to create tools that send people Telegram alerts to help people save slots.

“Right now, even if you find a loophole using alerts, you have to go to the government website and follow a lot of steps. Companies will have a better user experience compared to CoWIN,” said Berty Thomas, software developer who designed Telegram alerts to inform people of the loopholes.

Paytm has also enabled the notification feature in its app.

Sharma said vaccine supplies should be improved going forward and praised the CoWIN platform, saying that at least three African nations – Zambia, Nigeria and Malawi – have asked about its use for vaccine units.

“We will give them the portal for free and they can customize it. This is very scalable, ”Sharma said.