COVID-19: Glitches In Co-WIN App Slow Down Vaccination Drive In Many States, Govt Strives To Fix It

India's COVID-19 vaccination drive is not running as smoothly as the government wanted, as several glitches have surfaced in Co-WIN app which is used to monitor the drive across the country.

The Centre has introduced an app called Co-WIN (COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network) is aimed at helping health authorities monitor coronavirus vaccines in real-time. The app is used to register and acknowledge beneficiaries, allocating vaccination centres, live monitoring, etc.

As per reports, the vaccination drive in Maharashtra was paused for two days due to technical issues with the app. The same issue was found in other states as well. The Odisha government also had to put a pause to vaccination drive for a day.

A statement from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation acknowledged the glitches and added that registrations had to be done offline, which were manually updated in the system later. Apart from this, in Bengaluru, many healthcare workers who have already received the first dose of the vaccine are getting alerts due to technical errors. Such false alerts have created confusion amid people.

Jharkhand health minister Banna Gupta shared that across many districts, they are facing issues like slow loading speeds. Further, he added that they had been told that this error is occurring due to increased load on the portal. For now, the government is working on fixing the Co-WIN app issues.

Besides, another major obstacle that has surfaced is that the government has not taken into account all those people who registered for vaccination in the first few days but did not turn up. Also, no provision was created for registering alternate healthcare workers on the spot.

However, after facing this problem, the app will now include an absentee provision. It will allow another eligible person to take the vaccine in real-time for the free slot.

It will also bring real-time authentication through Aadhaar for verification purposes.

Under the updated Co-WIN app, the eligible candidates can verify their identity through Aadhaar-based OTP or through mobile number and photograph to get the vaccination shot as a replacement to the absentee.

As reported by The Economic Times, around 80% of the people who have been vaccinated have authenticated through Aadhaar. The Co-WIN platform is owned by the ministry of health and family welfare and was earlier used for conducting Pulse Polio and other important immunisation programmes across the country.

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