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

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 vaccineseekers 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 1COWIN portal is working There was a minor glitch at 4 pm that was fixed 18plus can registerrdquo officials said on social mediaBeneficiaries 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 phoneldquoI 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 loadrdquo Rajneesh Desai from Dadar saidAnother citizen Mrinal Sarkar said Aarogya SetuCoWIN was not working for the 1844 age group ldquoI tried five times todayrdquoHarish Kore too was stuck He said ldquoWhile registering in the CoWIN app therersquos a problem of pin code not being accepted Please ensure at least the service you are providing is properly working or notrdquoCitizens 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 ldquoIt does not show the list of available centres There is confusion Are ESIS Kandivali and Akurli Maternity Home the same or differentrdquoMarketing executive Shrikrishna Raje wondered why wasnrsquot CoWIN working particularly the Android version He said one had to compulsorily log in through a desktop on the website ldquoA working app would have been easier than going to the browserrdquo said RajePINbased option never works said Kanu Kumar ldquoOnce you select the state you hit a dead end as the dropdown menu to select the district doesnrsquot show anythingrdquo he saidMulund resident Manish Agarwal was unsparing in his criticism He said ldquoCoWIN 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 eyewashrdquoCivic officials could not throw much light on the problem ldquoRight 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 BMCrsquos decision they will get the vaccination only at private centres after registrationrdquo said Dr Mangala Gomare BMCrsquos executive health officerGovtrsquos statementldquoIt is clarified that the media reports that the CoWIN 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 47pm todayrdquo said the Government of India on Wednesday evening4 PMTime on Wednesday when the app collapsed