Despite upgrading the centralised Co-Win application to Co-Win 2.0, the technical glitch still persists which lead to a poor start of the third phase vaccination drive for senior citizens across the city.
However, the response from the senior citizen was encouraging as there was chaos at all the eight centres which was selected for the drive. The vaccination process was about to start in the afternoon, but the on-site registration process began at 9 am, however, the portal crashed following which the drive was delayed by three hours at some of the centres.
However, early morning chaos breaks out at NESCO ground's vaccination centre as health workers, frontline workers, senior citizens and citizens with co-morbidities queue up to get vaccinated from 9.00 am. But owing to a non-functioning CoWIN application, the drive was halted for three hours.
Most of the beneficiaries had visited the centres at 9am thinking it would be the first come first basis but they had to wait for more than three hours to get themselves registered and take the vaccine shots. “We had reached the centres early morning but we realised the application is not working and we have to wait until the application is working but by that time our names were taken manually and we were asked to wait at the centres itself,” said a 62-year-old Neha Sharma (name changed).
While on-spot registrations began after 9am, actual vaccination could only begin after 11am because of a glitch. Officials are required to register details about allotment before administering doses and were unable to complete this process leading to delay.
“There was a one-hour delay in the morning but now the vaccination process is going on swiftly. By afternoon over 100 senior citizens and persons with co-morbidities registered for vaccines. We have capability to vaccinate upto 1,000 senior citizens a day in addition to medical personnel and other frontline workers,” said Dr Rajesh Dere, dean of Covid centre at BKC.
Pradeep Angre, the Dean of the Mulund facility said that the server started working around 11:45am. People have been able to register themselves on the CoWIN app though.
Meanwhile, Society for Rehabilitation of Crippled Children (SRCC) at Haji Ali which is one of the centres will not being vaccinating any senior citizens today due to the fault in the Co-Win 2.0 portal, following which they are only registering the names of the beneficiaries and asking them to come tomorrow after they get a call.
Officials said they are taking down all the names of the senior citizens or 45+ with comorbidities and requesting them to return home as the vaccination drive will not be happening today due to the technical glitch issue in the Co-Win 2.0 portal. “Since morning more than 100 beneficiaries have turned up to the centre but we are helpless as the Co-Win 2.0 is not working properly due to which we are not able to cross verify the names. Moreover we will be giving the priority to senior citizens who have registered at Co-Win 2.0 application despite taking down the names manually. Meanwhile we will call each beneficiary and inform them about the slot,” he said.
