Co-WIN app slows down, Pune hospitals forced to do manual registration

The app is designed to ease the process of verification and registration of over thirty million health care workers in the country, avoid hoarding and ensure vaccination of only verified beneficiary

On the first day of the vaccination drive on Saturday in Pune district, the Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) app, developed by the Centre to monitor and track the inoculation process, slowed down after developing technical glitches forcing hospitals to do manual registrations.

Multiple hospitals reported that the Co-WIN site had either crashed or was too slow and beneficiaries could not be registered on it. (Praful Gangurde/ HT Photo)

The app was designed to ease the process of verification and registration of over thirty million health care workers in the country, avoid hoarding and ensure vaccination of only verified beneficiary.

Dr Ashish Bharti, health chief, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), who was present at the Kamala Nehru hospital, said, “We had alerted authorities about technical glitches and had to manually carry out beneficiary verification. Since most of the government staff are already present at the hospital, we did not face a major issue throughout the day. However, major hospitals like Sassoon General Hospital and private hospitals whose staff are working in shifts had to call their off-duty staff back to the hospital for vaccination. The state is insisting to vaccinate only as per the software list, but the site is not working even on mobile.”

“We have been asked to upload the data offline since the app was not working during the day, but it was not working at most sites and we were unable to upload the data,” he said.

Multiple hospitals reported that the Co-WIN site had either crashed or was too slow and beneficiaries could not be registered on it. One of the staff at the Kamala Nehru hospital handling the registration process said, “The site crashed and we had to manually verify each beneficiary. We received the list last night and are vaccinating beneficiaries who turned up and not according to the software. We took a print of the list and manually verified each beneficiary before allowing them at the vaccination site.”

By late evening, local authorities got messages from the state government that the Co-WIN app has started working and upload data offline.

Dr Manisha Karmarkar, chief operating officer, Ruby Hall Clinic, said, “We got the list of beneficiaries late Friday night. We then prepared a time slot for beneficiaries and put it out on our various hospital WhatsApp groups. The messages to beneficiaries did not mention any time and so we prepared a time slot for each beneficiaries and asked them to come at that particular time. Since this was the first day, we could personally message everyone and create time slots and get it done, but it would be better if the app could create time slots in case we have to vaccinate staff from other hospitals. “

Dr Rebecca George, deputy medical director at the hospital said, “Earlier, we had to verify all the information on the app and update once the beneficiary is vaccinated, but early morning the Co-WIN site did not open at all and we manually entered all the information on our computers and kept it ready in case we are asked to upload it later. We had not even received the password and login ID as of Saturday morning. Those who could not make it for vaccination today would be scheduled automatically by the Co-WIN app.”

Siddharth Waghmare, medical officer, Dhole Patil road ward which houses multiple major hospitals, was present at Ruby Hall Clinic to supervise the vaccination process. He said, “The site is slow and so we have asked the hospital staff to manually enter information. At each stage — verification, vaccination and post-observation — we had to enter the details, however, that could not be done.”

Dr HK Sale, executive director at Noble hospital said, “The vaccination process was carried out smoothly, but we faced a few glitches. The site was not opening and so we had to manually enter the details. Also, the messages were sent out to beneficiaries late Friday night and since it was a weekend maybe some of them were not present in town or even had just finished their shifts in the morning and had gone home. “

Dr Prakash Rokde at Aundh district hospital confirmed that they had to manually enter the details of beneficiaries since the site was not working. He said, “It could be because all the sites across the country were trying to log in at the same time and so the site got slow.”