People who participated in Covid vaccine trials will get CoWIN certificates: Health Ministry

People who participated in Covid vaccine trials and were given vaccine and not placebo will be covered under CoWIN and certificates will be generated for them, the Union health ministry said on Tuesday. Placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value.

Responding to a question if people who participated in clinical trials of vaccine will be given certificate by CoWin, Joint Secretary in the ministry, Lav Agarwal, said people who participated in vaccine trials were given paper certificates but later questions were raised if they should be covered under CoWIN too.

Keeping that in view an order has been issued, he told a press conference.


"We have asked the ICMR to give us a list of people who participated in clinical trials and based on that list, certificates for them will be generated on CoWIN. In clinical trials, some people are given placebo while some are given the vaccine so certificates of only those who were given the vaccine will be generated," the official said.

CoWIN is a web portal for Covid vaccination registration and it generates a digital certificate once a person receives both doses of a vaccine.

Agarwal said those people will be given certificates who participated in completed trials and in those trials which were part of the emergency use authorization.

"The ongoing trials will not be disturbed," he said.