Mumbai: Glitches mar CoWIN registration for 18+ COVID-19 vaccine seekers

Beneficiaries were a frustated lot on Wednesday as the CoWIN portal collapsed. Pic/Ashish Raje

The CoWIN portal collapsed under heavy traffic on Wednesday afternoon as it began allowing the 18+ category to register for COVID vaccines. Authorities said the problem was resolved in some time and bookings resumed for the new set of vaccine-seekers who will be eligible from May 1. But frustrated beneficiaries took to social media to raise a host of failures that stalled their registration on Day 1.

COWIN portal is working. There was a minor glitch at 4 pm that was fixed. 18-plus can register," officials said on social media.

Beneficiaries had a host of complaints. They said that either they could not log in to the portal or faced issues with registration. Some were saddled with error messages, while others said they did not receive the OTP required to log in to CoWIN on their phone.

"I received two OTPs but much later. By that time, the registration had lapsed. The app was very slow. They should have prepared earlier, knowing that the announcement [for registration] had been done before. The app servers should be able to take the load," Rajneesh Desai from Dadar said.

Another citizen, Mrinal Sarkar, said Aarogya Setu/CoWIN was not working for the 18-44 age group. "I tried five times today".

Harish Kore too was stuck. He said, "While registering in the CoWIN app, there's a problem of pin code not being accepted. Please ensure at least the service you are providing is properly working or not."

Citizens faced a range of other problems, including with appointments and selecting centres. Milind R from Kandivli said the app did not give an appointment for the second dose. "It does not show the list of available centres. There is confusion. Are ESIS Kandivali and Akurli Maternity Home the same or different?"

Marketing executive Shrikrishna Raje wondered why wasn't CoWIN working, particularly the Android version. He said one had to compulsorily log in through a desktop on the website. "A working app would have been easier than going to the browser," said Raje.

PIN-based option never works, said Kanu Kumar. "Once you select the state, you hit a dead end as the drop-down menu to select the district doesn't show anything," he said.

Mulund resident Manish Agarwal was unsparing in his criticism. He said, "CoWIN site not working properly. Registration happening without any appointment booking. Seems vaccine and centres not in place. Just opening for 18+ without readiness is an eyewash."

Civic officials could not throw much light on the problem. "Right now we do not have data on the number of registrations done through mobile applications by the citizens between 18 and 45 years today. As per BMC's decision, they will get the vaccination only at private centres after registration," said Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC's executive health officer.

Govt's statement

"It is clarified that the media reports that the Co-WIN Digital Platform has crashed are incorrect and are without any basis. It continues to work smoothly. More than 80 lakh people registered themselves on the portal between 4-7pm today," said the Government of India on Wednesday evening.

4 PM
Time on Wednesday when the app collapsed