With Prime Minister Narendra Modi setting the ball rolling for the third phase of the vaccination, joining the long list of global leaders who have taken the jab, senior citizens started lining up at the hospitals from early morning.
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan announced that he would take the shot tomorrow.
With the CoWIN portal opening registration from 9 AM hospitals in Delhi started the vaccination drive from 12pm. Delhi’s Max hospital started receiving both walk-ins and pre-registered beneficiaries from 9am.
“The CoWIN system is only giving forenoon and afternoon slots and no specific time band...This has to be sorted to avoid crowding,” Sahar Qureshi, medical superintendent, Max smart super specialty hospital said.
Most Delhi hospitals kept sessions till 3 PM for pre registered persons and there after for another 90 minutes was reserved for walk-ins. More than 300 people had already turned up at the Max hospital by 2:30 pm.
“We have to wait for about two hours to get our turn. A token has been given to us and we are waiting to be called,” 67-year-old Sneh Bansal, a resident of Shalimar Bagh.
Doctors also complained of Co-WIN slowing down the process of registration as uploading of the data took a long time.
One person was being allowed to register up to four beneficiaries. Several people reported issues such as non-delivery of the one time password, cancellation of appointments even as the health ministry clarified that Co-WIN is not an app for the general public but has to be accessed through the website www.cowin.gov.in or other platforms such as Arogya Setu.
Several clinics and labs which were listed as vaccination centres by the government were not providing any jabs. Two such facilities in south Delhi saw patients turning up in the morning enquiring about the vaccine. “We are trying to clarify with the government that we are not a covid vaccination centre,” a staff at one of the eye clinics in south Delhi said.
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