Over 10 million 18+ sign up; no slots for jabs yet
NEW DELHI: A little over 10 million people signed up on the Co-WIN platform in roughly six hours after it began accepting registrations from those in the 18-44 age group on Wednesday, though these new signees are not likely to get coronavirus vaccines when they become eligible for the jabs on May 1 due to supply constraints.
The registration process opened at 4pm. According to the Co-WIN dashboard, there were roughly 1.2 million new registrations till 3pm. By 10pm, the total number of people who signed through the day shot up to over 12 million.
“[There were] no glitches. We registered 3.5 million people in one hour. We delivered 8.7 million SMSes in 1.5 hours,” said the chairman of the empowered group on vaccination, RS Sharma.
Some people reported being unable to access the website immediately after 4pm, and an official, who asked not to be named, said there was an outage for half an hour before the platform was up and functional again.
“People are now receiving
OTPs within two to three seconds,” the official said, asking not to be named. “Initially, the load always increases. More people than one can account for turn up. But then it settles down. This is not unusual.” The official said that at one point the service was receiving 2.7 million hits per minute.
Some people soon after signing up began posting screenshots on social media of the service not allowing anyone under 45 to select an appointment.
A government official said this was because vaccination sites were mostly available at present for people over 45 years of age who continue to be part of the campaign for which doses are being distributed by the Union government. Doses for those under 45 are meant to be acquired directly by state governments or private hospitals, which is yet to happen.
“The rest are in the process of negotiating prices and checking vaccine availability. The drive starts from May 1,
people should soon be able to book appointments as well,” this person added.
But officials across several states and in private hospitals said they have little idea about when they will be able to restart vaccinations. “We haven’t really been given a free hand though the government is also allowing private hospitals to procure. First priority is the Centre, then it is the states, and then private,” said Shobana Kamineni, executive vice-chairperson at Apollo Hospitals.