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Website for vaccine registration — State Ministry Sec clarifies
Like a jab from the blue spreading confusion, came the news of the launch of a website (ehr.lk) on Thursday by the State Ministry for Primary Healthcare, Epidemics & COVID Disease Control, where people can register for vaccination against COVID-19.
Many pointed out that with the launch of such a website, urging the public to register themselves on ‘ehr.lk’, the vital National Vaccination Programme against COVID-19 was sending out many mixed signals. It had not even been piloted before it was launched nationally.
By Friday, the App was blocked and the link was down, the Sunday Times found, while many were the queries raised about privacy, confidentiality, who would keep the data, whether ehr.lk was an official site and confusion with regard to the questionnaire (where the vaccination would be administered, as there were indications that private hospitals would also be vaccination sites).
“Now who would decide on the priority list for vaccines,” asked a health source, pointing out that the official committees handling vaccination were the Presidential Task Force headed by Presidential Advisor Lalith Weeratunga and the Health Ministry committee headed by Dr. Lakshmi Somatunga.
The Sunday Times sought clarifications on all these issues from the Secretary of the State Ministry for Primary Healthcare, Epidemics & COVID Disease Control, Dr. Amal Harsha de Silva on Friday afternoon.
There is absolute confusion with the launch of the web site? Your views please?
This government wants technology to be used in delivering medical care. People should be given a better deal than what they are being given today. We have been trying to get the electoral list from the Election Commission for almost three months. The Commissioner is very nice but we have been getting little information and we have been struggling to allocate this electoral list to certain places where the vaccines have to be given. To sieve the data of those less than 18 years and above 60 years of age, pregnant mothers, lactating women, all those things are extremely difficult to list in a manual form. This is why, while the electoral system is going on, while the manual system is going on – we thought as a ministry that we would like to launch a website.
Electoral lists are there but there are a lot of problems, sometimes dead people, people who are abroad are there in the list and those who are pregnant cannot be identified from this list.
Why was the new ministry (State Ministry for Primary Healthcare, Epidemics & COVID Disease Control) created? It is because things have been lagging for a long time. What I’m trying to say is that there is a reason that this new ministry was created. I’m not trying to criticize the Health Ministry but people expected something more when the COVID disease control was separated to a sub-ministry.
Likewise, we have to have a fresh look into things that are happening in the country. The priority list is also there, but when people get registered, we can give a command and immediately trace the location of, for example, those over 60 and those who have comorbidities.
We can also find out how many are willing to get the vaccine. Our communications, our estimations and our expectations of how the people will behave have been a little deviant from how they are really behaving. There is a gap between what is expected and what is happening.
We can also immediately know after they register, where they have to go to among the 4,000 centres that have been set up, from the Google map.
There is a lot of criticism when you do a new thing but within four hours there were 50,000 submissions to the website.
Who is administering the website and what of data protection?
Medical Informatics in the Health Ministry. The data protection is by the Health Ministry and Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) is the host of the data.
We have got the addresses and website from the SLT.
What of people who do not have access to technology?
If you have a phone, please help your neighbour. Help others to get the records in and then we will see the numbers. If the numbers are still low, we will have to use a personal drive to get the data in. We can locate through Google maps and see why a particular house is not in.
There are fake profiles on social media which are using the government logo. Be cautious and record the data on the correct website.
Dr de Silva said that the team which gave of their voluntary support to establish the website included Prof Ranjith Premasiri (Head of the Geology Department, University of Moratuwa); Prof Deepthi Wickremasinghe (Head of the Zoology Department, University of Colombo); Prof Neelika Malavige (Head of the Department of Immunology and Molecular Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura); Dr Sagara Chandrasekera (University of Colombo); Dr Hemantha Kumara (Disaster Management Specialist at the Panadura Base Hospital); and Prof Sarath Wijewickrema & Prof Niranjala Tillakaratne (University of California, Los Angeles – UCLA).