New Delhi: The government’s CoWIN portal saw a massive volume of traffic after registration for Covid-19 vaccines opened for those aged 18 years and above at 4 pm Wednesday.
As many as one crore Indians registered on the portal in just four hours, said Abhishek Singh, CEO, MyGov, a part of the IT ministry.
“One crore Indians have registered on Co-Win portal to receive the vaccine in a matter of 4 hours on the first day vaccine registrations opened for those aged 18 and above. This shows India’s youth wants to get vaccinated, India’s youth is tech-savvy,” he added.
“The CoWIN portal has received as many as 27 lakh hits per minute from Indians registering for the largest vaccination drive in the world,” he added.
The vaccination strategy is being headed by government officials including Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and Dr R. S. Sharma, chairman, Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to combat Covid-19, along with assistance from officials like Singh.
Singh said there is a team of 50-60 engineers and officials from across health ministry and IT ministry, who are working to make sure the portal runs smoothly.
“These officials have been working round-the-clock for more than two months to set up and ensure smooth running of the CoWIN portal,” he said.
Singh also said users were not finding slots for vaccination on the portal because the states are yet to “finalise the process of procuring the vaccine from the vaccine maker”. The slots will open up later on the portal.
Users also faced server issues at the time of registration, but Singh said it was fixed within 30 minutes.
Also read: Expect 6-7 million Covid vaccinations to happen daily from 1 May, says CoWin panel head
Server issue fixed
Faced with server issues, many users posted screenshots on Twitter that showed, “CoWIN Server is facing issues. Please try later.”
And cowin server is down ? pic.twitter.com/b1EW9gIfgw
— Varun Krishnan (@varunkrish) April 28, 2021
Singh said their team is working to ensure that users can register themselves anytime.
“Of course, when there is a surge in users, the server will experience some hiccup, but that was resolved in under 30 minutes. Team is working round-the-clock to ensure that CoWIN can be accessed 24×7 so Indians can register for a vaccine any time of day,” he said.
“Users are please requested to be patient, refresh the CoWIN page if on first try they are not able to register due to surge in users to the portal,” Singh added.
Meanwhile, a press release by PIB said reports of the portal’s server crashing during registration were untrue.
“Some of the media reports today suggested that the CoWIN platform was unresponsive/overshooting the server capacity and was not able to respond to the unprecedented number of registrations taking place. It is clarified that the media reports that the server has crashed are incorrect and are without any basis. The server supporting the CoWIN digital portal continues to work smoothly at its highest efficiency,” it said.
The server glitch was, however, resolved quickly as users were able to later successfully register.
Managing Editor of fact-checking website Boom, Jency Jacob, tweeted, “Successfully registered. Looked at various states and city combination to schedule dose. Can’t see any centre post May 1 yet. Hopefully, it will change soon.”
Successfully registered. Looked at various states and city combination to schedule dose. Can’t see any centre post May 1 yet. Hopefully, it will change soon. https://t.co/TcSipk7Onz
— Jency Jacob (@jencyjac) April 28, 2021
On users not getting slots for vaccination, Singh said, “This is likely due to the respective state and private vaccine centres being yet to finalise the process of procuring the vaccine from the vaccine maker, and finalising the prices of the vaccines.”
“The appointment will arrive on the CoWIN portal only when states have finalised the vaccine procurements at their end,” he added.
(Edited by Debalina Dey)
Also read: Registration for Covid vaccination for those above 18 to begin from 28 April on CoWIN
Make the slotting dynamic sub district wise for First dose and second dose instead of age. Government has data of how many require second dose so the quota can be adjusted per day or week between first dose and second dose. If no person below 45 is able to get vaccine on 1 May, then it is nothing but a jumla