App glitch delays vaccination drive

Of the 300,000 only 191,181 people could be inoculated on the first day

India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive was still facing some delays yesterday after it hit a bump on the first day due to glitches in an app used to coordinate the campaign, according to officials in some states.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched on Saturday what his government has described as the “world’s largest vaccination programme”. It aims to vaccinate around 300 million people to curb the pandemic in India, which has reported the second highest number of coronavirus cases after the United States.

India was aiming to vaccinate more than 300,000 people on Saturday, but only 191,181 people were inoculated on the first day, official data shows.

Many health workers, who were due to receive a vaccine on Saturday, did not get the message via an app developed by the government called Co-Win, officials in at least four states said. Officials in at least one state said the issues had still not been resolved yesterday.

Close monitoring

Co-Win is supposed to alert health care workers, who are first in line to get shots. It also allows officials to monitor and manage the entire programme.

“We were planning to vaccinate 28,500 people on Saturday but could do only 18,328 because of glitches in the Co-Win app,” a senior official at the health department of the western state of Maharashtra told Reuters on condition on anonymity.

In the eastern states of Odisha and West Bengal, officials said they were forced to use printouts on Saturday due to issues with the app.