Lucknow, May 18 (IANS): The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has decided to start registrations at common service centres across districts in order to help people in rural parts of the state register on the CoWin app for vaccination.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath has said that about 1.3 lakh such centres across the state will assist people in registering on the app and eventually, provide the facility of vaccination.

"To increase the pace of vaccination in rural areas, we have decided that common service centres will be roped in to help people register on the CoWin app. Each centre will provide this facility and also that of vaccination in the near future. The work will be done for free and nobody is to charge for helping someone with the work," the government spokesman said.

The state government had announced free vaccination for those in the age group of 18 to 44 years.

Additional chief secretary (information) Navneet Sehgal said that the work of vaccination in rural areas will be rolled out at war footing, as was done for testing.

He said that till now, 1.16 crore people had received their first vaccine shot while 31.6 lakh people had received their second.

Meanwhile, to acquire more vaccines, the government has made crucial changes to its global tender conditions which will now allow companies like Pfizer and Moderna to bid.

It has halved the global tender earnest money deposit amount from Rs 16 crore and made changes to temperature and storage conditions.

From storage at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, the temperature has been reduced to -20 from -80 degrees Celsius.

Companies will have to transport vaccines to the government warehouse and make arrangements for their storage at very low temperatures.