A day after India kick-started the world’s biggest vaccination drive, some states have halted inoculation program after some technical snags were reported in the CoWin app.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had temporarily suspended the Covid-19 immunisation programme for two days to fix the glitches in the CoWin app.
After starting the vaccination drive on Saturday, the BMC suspended it on Sunday after the state asked them to. However, the state health ministry has refuted the claim and instead said the no Covid vaccination was planned on January 17 and 18. The next session is slated to resume on January 19.
The health department said the vaccination will resume after discussion with the Centre on the CoWin app. It, however, added that the vaccination programme will not begin across the state.
The health department official stated: “We expect the issue to be resolved by Sunday evening, but we wouldn’t be in position to reach out to the beneficiaries to resume it on Monday. As the government wants the data entry online only, we have decided to not resume it before Tuesday.”
After facing some glitches in the digital app, other states too had suspended their respective drive. In states like Himachal Pradesh and Haryana some people registered on the app did not receive the mandatory message schedule to get vaccination, that is generated in the CoWin portal.
Several centers in Karnataka too had faced the same problem as server had crashed in Bengaluru during the dry run and several health workers had to rely on manual registration.
Meanwhile, Odisha halted the drive to observe people who were inoculated on Saturday. “We want to observe those who took the vaccine,” the state additional chief secretary (health) said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the nationwide vaccination drive aimed at inoculating as many as 1,91,181 healthcare and frontline workers in the first phase.