No Covid vaccine slots available, people forced to wait till April

BENGALURU: Many people, who have been trying to register on the CoWIN portal, have been facing unavailability of slots at hospitals nearby until March end. Hence, they are waiting for the April slots to open.Gururaja Rao (75), resident of T Dasarahalli who has been trying to register online from Day 1, is disappointed. “For the past three days I have been trying to book a slot. But the app shows no appointments are available for the whole of March.

Since my locality comes under Dasarahalli zone, I tried all the hospitals listed under the zone for vaccination and not a single hospital showed the availability. The other problem I faced was that after registering, I did not get an OTP. I then had to try it through another phone, wherein OTP came after 30 minutes, while the validity is only 1.30 minutes. And then once I registered, no slots were available.”

Uma Narayan, resident of Whitefield, too faced unavailability of slots for this month at all the centres listed in Mahadevapura zone. “We believe the process can be streamlined to guide us better. While 
a technology model is good and scalable, it is not working as advertised,” she said.A 30-year-old resident of Hebbal who tried to register five senior citizens couldn’t get the slots. “It is better to start spot registrations,” he said.

However, Health Commissioner Thrilok Chandra said, “We have allowed spot registration as well in the urban areas. But it depends on the hospitals to get it done partially or stick to CoWIN only. Many are still sticking to online registration.”