There were at least 13 kinds of glitches that were identified during dry runs of the Co-WIN vaccine management application. These were listed out in a presentation on Friday to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health by K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the government. Co-WIN is the backbone of the government's drive to vaccinate 30 million healthcare workers and frontline beneficiaries.
These snags include the absence of a mechanism to record reasons if a beneficiary wasn't vaccinated, delays in the SMS delivery to beneficiaries, the weblink that allowed adverse events to be reported not working and the software module being unable to account for the vials returned after a session was completed.
Of the 13 “issues” identified, 12 have been resolved, according to a copy of the presentation viewed by The Hindu. Mr. VijayRaghavan referenced data from the NITI Ayog and the Health Ministry for the presentation.
So far 1.2 million beneficiaries have been vaccinated with either Covishield or Covaxin in 24,397 sessions-- or about half of what should have been ideally targeted since the vaccination drive began last Saturday.
There have been concerns raised by States since the drive began, with some entirely suspending the use of the software for a few days but pressing ahead with the inoculation. In other instances, beneficiaries didn't receive messages on the date and time of their inoculation and vaccine hesitancy--for reasons not entirely explained by the government-- has meant that many haven't turned up for their shots in spite of registering for it.
There are 66 million doses of vaccine required for healthcare workers and frontline workers and around 7.7 million beneficiaries have been registered on Co-WIN. The government plans on covering 300 million beneficiaries (which includes those above 50 and those with co-morbidities) in the next eight months.
The Co-WIN software has provisions for creating a unique health id for willing beneficiaries and broadcasts sms' in 12 languages to beneficiaries and vaccinators. So far it has data uploaded for 2.5 lakh vaccinators, 52,193 public health facilities and 5.3 lakh session sites. There were three rounds of dry runs conducted.