NEW DELHI: India's technology platform for COVID vaccination - CoWin -is being made open source and soon it will be available to all countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday, asserting that India has been committed to sharing its expertise and resources with the global community in combating the pandemic.
Addressing the CoWIN Global Conclave via video conference, Modi said that experience shows that no nation, no matter how powerful, can solve a challenge like this pandemic in isolation. "Right from the beginning of the pandemic, India has been committed to sharing all our experiences, expertise and resources with the global community in this battle. Despite all our constraints, we have tried to share as much as possible with the world," the prime minister said.
Noting that technology is integral to India's fight against COVID-19, Modi said luckily, software is one area in which there are no resource constraints. "That's why we made our COVID tracing and tracking App open source as soon as it was technically feasible," he said.
Asserting that vaccination is the best hope for humanity to emerge successfully from the pandemic, Modi said right from the beginning, "we in India decided to adopt a completely digital approach while planning our vaccination strategy".
He said that Indian civilization considers the whole world as one family and this pandemic has made many people realise the fundamental truth of this philosophy. "That's why, our technology platform for COVID vaccination - the platform we call CoWIN- is being prepared to be made open source so (that) it will be available in any and all countries," Modi said.
About 50 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama and Uganda, have shown interest in adopting CoWIN to run their vaccination drives, Dr RS Sharma, the CEO of the National Health Authority (NHA), had said recently, adding that India is ready to share the open-source software for free.