Data irregularities hamper vaccine certification

The decision to make immunisation certificate a requisite for air travel and entrance into various facilities including restaurants and offices, has thrusted thousands of Pakistanis in a frenzy to secure it.

However, owing to alleged discrepancies in the records of the issuing authority, many who’ve completed their full dose of vaccination, have still been left running from pillar to post in quest of obtaining the coveted document.

Kulsoom Bibi, who is a resident of Lahore and fully vaccinated, says that her data is yet to be updated on the National Database and Registration Authority’s system.

Due to which, she is not eligible to receive a vaccination certificate.  “I keep complaining again and again but there is no response from anyone,” she told lamentingly.

The same irregularities, on the other hand, have also reportedly obstructed some from completing the course of their anti-coronavirus jabs.

Mohammad Mohiuddin, who received his first dose in Lahore, complains of being deprived of a second dose because NADRA records somehow declare him as fully vaccinated.

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“It’s been a month that I have been circling the Expo Centre but I haven’t received any guidelines from the people there or even the NADRA website,” commented Mohiuddin.

Similar discrepancies have also been reported in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where citizens claim of being issued a provisional certificate of immunisation instead of the actual document.

Thirty-year old Rashid Minhas, who received his first dose of the Chinese-made vaccine on May 27, said that he was told by the vaccinators to come back after 20 days for his second jab.

However, despite passing of the recommended interval period, Minhas never received a second dose notification from the National Command and Operation Center and was left in doldrums for over two months.

Following which, he decided to go to the vaccination centre himself and got his second dose on July 20. 

He told to download his vaccination certificate online. “I was surprised to learn that it was just the provisional copy and not the authentic certificate, as NADRA’s data had no record of my first dose,”

Minhas complained. “Now my office is pressurising me to furnish the original certificate and threatening to withhold my salary, but I don’t know what to do,” he added.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, the thirty-year old blamed the inconsistencies in NADRA’s records to the unreliable mode of data-collection at KP’s vaccination centres.

“There is no electronic means of recording citizen credentials at a lot of our vaccination facilities and staffers just tally data in writing on a notepad.

Then imagine manually transferring thousands of such handwritten notes to a computer and then feeding that into NADRA’s system. So of course this system is prone to errors at every stage” asserted Minhas.

A somewhat similar scenario is also reported to be playing out southwards in the coastal city of Karachi.

Although vaccination centres here are equipped with computers to record citizen data, they are said to be severely understaffed and there is a disconnect between systems used by NADRA and the Sindh government.

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While NADRA’s data entry software is developed to work online and update real-time records, the one at Sindh government’s disposal is a dawdling offline programme.

The collected data is then furnished to NADRA in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which has to be fed into the national database.

This stream significantly slows down the process as opposed to the NADRA programme, which is capable of issuing a vaccination certificate within 30 minutes of complete immunisation.

Speaking in the regard, NADRA Public Relation Officer Faiq Ali maintained that his department has nothing to do with vaccinations and is solely responsible for issuing immunisation certificates.

“The data coming from each province is overseen by NCOC, while our system just automatically uploads whatever information we are provided,” he stated.

According to Punjab Department of Primary and Secondary Health Care spokesperson on the other hand, the inaccuracies in vaccination data could also be owed to missing and erroneous details provided by the citizens themselves.

“It is often the people’s fault that is declared as negligence of the health department. A counter has been set up in all the vaccination centres from where the citizens can get their information corrected and people should consider that instead of waiting till it’s too late,” he told The Express Tribune.