Covid-19 vaccination in India: Maharashtra centres continue to face glitches in CoWIN app, forced to record data manually

CoWIN app: The Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network or the CoWIN app is being used to carry out the coronavirus vaccination drive throughout the country. However, the app has some glitches, and incidents from some districts in Maharashtra showed that it was working slowly and taking a lot of time to upload the data the recipients on the second day of vaccination in the state, even as the app’s performance improved as compared to the previous day, according to a report in The Indian Express. The report added that the vaccination centres are now bracing themselves for the manual entry of daily vaccination data, something that has already begun at some places.

A government-developed digital platform, CoWIN is supposed to aid in smooth carrying out of the vaccination drive by scheduling the appointments for registered beneficiaries, tracking real-time updates on any adverse events as well as creating session lists.

Through this app, the data of about one crore health workers all over the country is being managed, for the first phase of the immunisation campaign. However, the app has been facing several technical glitches since it was formally brought into use on January 16 on the first day of the nation-wide drive.

The complaints carried on Tuesday from some districts, which said that the app was processing the data slowly, forcing them to switch to manually recording the data of recipients of the vaccine. At a later stage, all of the manual data would have to be entered into the app’s software.

The report said that in Beed, centres claimed the app took 10 minutes just so that a new recipient could be authenticated. Apart from this, the KEM hospital in Mumbai also said that the app was functioning erratically, causing the staff to switch between online and offline recording of recipient data for the entire day.

Since currently, the vaccination is being carried out on a few hundred people in a day at a centre, they are able to upload the data onto the app alongside. But once the drive goes on at a larger scale, these centres could have to deal with thousands of recipients a day, forcing them to upload the data only once the drive ends every day. However, the authorities can enter the data for a recipient only when the session for vaccination is underway, and upon the conclusion of the session, no more data can be uploaded. Hence, these centres would have to obtain special permission to enter this data to the software of the app after the conclusion of the vaccination session each day.