New Delhi: Confusion prevailed on the first day of the vaccination drive for senior citizens and those with comorbidities. Technical glitches on the CoWIN portal, long queues with senior citizens waiting in the sun, and confusion among hospital staff were common sight at most designated hospitals in capital Delhi and other states Monday.
This is the second phase of the vaccination drive. Unlike the first phase of the drive that catered to healthcare and frontline workers, this round is for those in the specified priority category of 60 years or above and those within 45-59 years with comorbidities.
They are all eligible for the two vaccines — AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.
In the second phase, individuals have the option to register and schedule the sessions on their own. The registration can be done through the CoWin platform on which individuals can register their mobile number, details of the beneficiaries and book time slots for vaccine sessions, and even reschedule if needed.
However, people across the country found the registration process chaotic.
On the first day of phase 2, vaccine was administered to 1,28,630 beneficiaries who were above 60 years old and 18,850 beneficiaries who were 45 years and above with specific comorbidities, according to a statement issued by the health ministry.
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CoWIN registration leaves many frustrated
On Monday, the elderly seen waiting in queues at hospitals had common complaints — their tryst with the CoWIN app and the lack of coordination at the vaccination centres.
Usha Agarwal, 71, a resident of Sainik Farms, who was accompanied by her daughter Anissha Agarwal to a vaccination centre in south Delhi, said: “I had registered online but we were made to wait for two hours.”
“At first, one wasn’t able to get the OTP on time,” Anissha said. “I logged in for my mom at least 10 times and when I succeeded, we arrived at the hospital, but again we were made to wait for two hours so it was quite a long day in that sense.”
Soumya Nambiar, a resident of Bengaluru, faced similar difficulties while signing up her parents for vaccination.
“I think they should have done a lot more testing. Right now, the user experience is horrible. I don’t think they expected so much traffic, so I don’t think they did a stress test… They must not have tested for different browsers and different environments,” she said.
Delhi’s Dwarka resident Col Sanjay Mahajan (retd), 60, accompanied by his mother, Amita Mahajan, 80, a resident of Rajinder Nagar, said he had registered online for both of them but neither received any confirmation message.
“So, we came here to Sir Ganga Ram and have been sitting in the lounge area as the authorities don’t have our names, but when I registered online, it did say confirmed,” Col Mahajan told ThePrint.
S.K. Khanna, 73, said he received the OTP six times after he tried registering from 9 am onwards on the web portal. “I have been waiting at my vaccination centre near ITO since 11:30 am,” he told ThePrint in the afternoon.
There were exceptions like 85-year-old Shaila Haider of Niti Bagh, who confirmed that she didn’t face any issue or trouble while registering on the CoWIN portal.
ThePrint reached director general health welfare of Delhi government, Nutan Mundeja, through calls and text messages for a comment, but there was no response until the time of publishing this report.
Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman of the Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to combat Covid-19, however, denied that the platform had glitches. He said: “We’ve had 29.08 lakh registrations since morning at 11 till 8.30 pm (Monday). And one mobile phone is allowed to have four people, so even if we compound the average of 2, more than 58 lakh people have registered on the platform since morning, 11 till 8.30. This is in 9.5 hrs.”
In Delhi, there are around 43 lakh people eligible for the vaccines in second phase.
The first phase, which began 16 January, saw over 3.6 lakh beneficiaries comprising healthcare and frontline workers vaccinated in Delhi. There are a total of 192 vaccination centres of which 56 are government facilities while the remaining are private hospitals.
The health ministry had Sunday released a user manual for ‘Citizen Registration and Appointment for Vaccination’. According to the guidelines, one phone number can be used to register as many as four beneficiaries.
To access the platform, users have to enter a mobile number on which they will receive a one-time password or OTP. But for many like Soumya Nambiar, accessing the website itself proved to be a challenge.
“…this app keeps logging out every 10-15 minutes. What happened is, I got logged out and I was not able to log back in. And the website kept asking for an OTP but it never came,” she said.
Nambiar managed to register using another number and added the required details like date of birth, gender and comorbidities. “But scheduling the appointment took me three hours…somehow the postal code option was not working properly, even if I was putting it for Indira Nagar it would show for all of Bangalore, there were over 1,000 hospitals,” she said.
Individuals have the option of choosing from nearby vaccination centres after they select their state, district, block and pin code form drop-down menus on the website.
Nambiar was finally able to get an appointment at a vaccination centre by the name of “Jain Block 2”. But neither the portal, nor the confirmation receipt included the address. She said, “It was chaotic…the elderly will have a lot of trouble going through it, and figuring out.”
Prashandh, a resident of Chennai, was forced to register his 63-year-old father up for a slot Monday in a hospital almost 15 km away because of a glitch. “The option to book an appointment later in the week was there, but it seemed to be disabled. Majority of the slots were already full.”
He added: “When I finally found a hospital with available slots near my home, the portal kept redirecting the appointment to the Apollo hospital 15 km away.”
Meanwhile, Allan Koshy John, a resident of Kerala’s Ernakulam, had little luck finding an available slot for his 65-year-old parents.
“We’ve been trying since 9.30 am. Initially, we weren’t receiving any OTP, then at 1 pm we were able to get OTP. But then once we looked up there were no slots available,” he said late Monday.
“The website doesn’t say anything, you look through four weeks for slots, but it says no slots available…But since we don’t know whether this is because it’s all booked out or if it is because of a glitch, we have to keep checking this now and then to see whether new slots have appeared or not.”
John, a software engineer, said the website is “not done up well” and has “too many errors”.
Also read: Covid vaccination phase 2 — here is how you can register, select time, reschedule slot
Variation in protocol across hospitals
According to the initial plan, hospitals were only supposed to vaccinate those who had first registered online and then visited the centres. However, hospital authorities at the spur of the minute decided to allow some of their patients to register on site as well.
While some hospitals were allowing walk-ins in Delhi, others weren’t.
For example at the government-run Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital in Delhi, where registration began by 10.30 am and went on until 5 pm, the initial plan was to not allow spot registrations.
“Since there was some confusion in the first half and people weren’t able to register online, those who came registered with the hospital and walked in, got the shot,” Dr Neelam Roy, nodal officer for Covid-19 vaccination at RML, told ThePrint. A total of 130 people received the shot here Monday.
At the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Dr Chhavi Gupta, media spokesperson and incharge of outsourcing, said while the hospital allowed people to register for a slot at the site, it allotted the slots for other days. “This doesn’t mean, one can come, register oneself and then get the shot right away,” Dr Gupta told ThePrint. “We can’t let it impact people who might have already registered on CoWIN online.”
Around 18 people in the 60+ years age category and 35 people in the 45-59 years category received the Covishield here Monday. There was no case of adverse event following vaccination reported at the hospital until 5 pm.
N.N. Mathur, director at Lady Hardinge Hospital, said they didn’t allow walk-ins Monday.
Long delays order of the day
The day was also marked by long delays for those waiting to be vaccinated.
K.L. Malhotra, 75, a resident of Paharganj, said he had been at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital since 10 am. He told ThePrint at 2:40 pm that his turn still hadn’t come. “I registered online but even then my turn hasn’t come and I feel tired now,” he said.
Sushil Khera, 78, who suffers from motor neuron disease, was at the hospital since 11 am and was again waiting for his turn at 2:45 pm. Hospital authorities at Ganga Ram said they would allow walk-ins after 3pm when ThePrint visited the centre in the afternoon.
A 68-year-old woman looking to get herself vaccinated at Ganga Ram told ThePrint that she reached the hospital after a two-hour registration process only to be told they hadn’t received her name. “What is the point of us running around if the portal fails itself? [It is] very frustrating,” she said.
Dr D.S. Rana, chairman, Gangaram Hospital, however, said: “It was the first day so as expected there were some issues and delay, but people were patient and cooperated. It is not our fault as the portal’s functioning wasn’t in our hands.”
At Max Hospital in Saket, over 600 people were waiting for their turn to get the Covid vaccine shot. While the hospital too had decided to allow walk-ins from 3 pm onwards, the entire process was delayed.
When ThePrint visited Max Hospital at 2 pm, the CoWIN portal wasn’t working due to which hospital authorities weren’t able to allow on-site registrations according to the original plan.
“Even if they made online payments on our website, the senior citizen category is expected to share the OTP with us as per the government guidelines else we can’t let them take the shot here, so we didn’t allow walk-ins,” said Tanushree, public relations manager for Max Hospital, Saket, who was present on the spot managing the crowd.
Several of the elderly sitting in wheelchairs in the sun were seen complaining to the authorities about poor arrangements often resulting in arguments.
In Kerala, Thrissur resident Abhishek Vinod’s aunt and uncle went through similar predicament.
Vinod said he had started checking the site since it became functional at 9 am, but it took him three hours to fix an appointment.
“I found slots only in one hospital, Wadakkanchery District Hospital, which is 30km from my place. We arrived by 3, but the authorities said the details had not reached their system so they cannot give us vaccines…there were other people who were also being turned away,” he said.
With inputs from Simrin Sirur & Manisha Mondal.
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