After initial hiccups, nearly 80 lakh people managed to register online for the mass vaccination drive beginning May 1 even as the Covid-19 death toll in the country crossed the two-lakh mark on Wednesday.
The Centre opened registration for the vaccination drive to every one above 18 years who will be eligible to get the jabs offered by state governments and private hospitals from May 1.
However, several states expressed inability to launch the vaccination drive on Saturday citing non-availability of vaccines and accused the Modi government of hijacking the entire quota of vaccines.
As India added 3.60 lakh new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, people rushed to register themselves for the vaccination drive when the Co-WIN platform opened registrations for all above 18 years of age at 4:00 pm
“There have been 79,65,729 registrations on Co-WIN today, most of these in the last three hours (16:00-19:00 hours) and mostly of the 18-44 age group,” said R S Sharma, the chairman of the Empowered Group tasked to look after the technology aspect of the Covid response.
“We have seen a traffic of 55,000 hits per second. System functioning as expected,” Sharma said.
Users faced trouble registering on the Co-WIN platform, which is mandatory to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.
“Failed multiple times to register on cowin website,” Palash Jain, from NIT Tiruchirapalli, said on Twitter.
A health ministry statement said the Co-Win platform received 383 million hits in the first three hours since the registrations opened at 4:00 p.m. – with the initial response as high as 2.7 million hit per minute.
The Co-WIN platform delivered as many as 1.45 crore SMS messages in the three-hour period.
At 4.35 pm, a tweet from the verified Twitter handle of the Aarogya Setu mobile application said the CoWIN portal was working and that there was a minor glitch at 4:00 p.m., which was fixed.
“Vaccination appointments for 18 plus will be possible once the state governments and private vaccination centres schedule vaccination sessions. Registration is happening on cowin.gov.in,” the Aarogya Setu app said on its Twitter handle.
Karnataka, too, has not received the vaccine doses that it said it has placed orders for by allocating Rs 400 crore.
In Bengaluru, Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar, without commenting on the May 1 rollout of vaccines in the state, said, “So far (from the beginning of the vaccination drive), we have received 91,20,777 vaccine doses (of both Covishield and Covaxin). Around 4.5 lakh doses are left with the State and another four lakh doses will be supplied this evening.”
“In all, we will have 8.5 lakh vaccine doses. It is not easy for the government to procure vaccines from just two companies and distribute it in the entire country.”
However, according to the Co-WIN dashboard, already 92,62,376 doses have been administered in the state till 8 pm out of which 78,54,827 were first dose and 14,07,549 were second dose. These figures indicate that there are no vaccine doses left with the government for the May 1 rollout for all adults.
The state has conducted two meetings so far with private hospitals with regard to vaccination. One was conducted by the BBMP on Tuesday and another by the Chief Secretary on Wednesday.
Dr G V Divakar, Joint Secretary, Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association, said, “Nobody has clarity on the rollout on Saturday. The state is unclear whether the rates publicised by the two companies (Covishield Rs 600, Covaxin Rs 1,200) are the landing price for hospitals or for customers. The Chief Secretary said it may take up to two weeks for private vaccination centres to offer vaccines. He said the two companies may deploy their agents for us to place orders with.”
Dr Y L Rajashekar, Secretary, PHANA, said, “Except Manipal, Apollo and Aster hospitals who said their respective central purchase committees are looking at purchasing vaccines, nobody had any clue on how to place orders.”