Topline
India’s Covid-19 vaccine registration portal crashed less than five minutes after it opened registration to all Indians above the age of 18, with many users complaining about glitches and incomplete registrations, highlighting the challenges the country’s expanded vaccination drive will likely face amid a mounting crisis.
BMC medical staff administer Covid-19 vaccines to beneficiaries at in Mumbai, India. The country ... [+]
Key Facts
The federal government’s “Co-Win” portal opened up to all adults in India on Wednesday afternoon but users started seeing a ‘504 – Gateway Time-out’ error page just minutes later, preventing them from signing up.
Many users who managed to open the website or app complained that they were not able to complete their verification process as the system failed to send them a text message with the required one-time password.
The official Twitter handle of the government’s Covid-19 app responded to mounting complaints on Twitter by issuing a statement that the portal was working now and it had been affected by a “minor glitch” that has been fixed.
While people are now able to register an account on the platform they say all available appointments are only open to people over the age of 45—for whom vaccinations have been open since the beginning of April.
Citing government sources, Indian news channel NDTV reported the portal was receiving almost 2.7 million hits per minute.
Tangent
The expanded vaccine registration process has been mired in chaos all day as the government silently delayed its launch, Medianama reported. Registrations opened at 4 p.m. local time Wednesday even though the original plan was to launch it at midnight.
Key Background
Earlier this month, the Indian government announced plans to expand its vaccine rollout to cover all adults starting May 1. India is in the midst of a deadly second wave of the pandemic and it has consistently reported on average over 300,000 daily new cases for the past week, higher than any other country. On Wednesday, the country crossed the grim milestone of 200,000 recorded deaths but several experts agree that this number is likely a massive undercount.
Further Reading
CoWIN Portal Crashes Minutes After Registrations Open For Vaccination Of 18+ (Medianama)
CoWin, Aarogya Setu crash minutes after Covid vaccine registration opens for all adults in India (Scroll)
India’s Official Covid-19 Death Toll Crosses 200,000 Even As Experts Warn Of Massive Undercounting (Forbes)
