Day 2: Glitches, hesitancy mar vaccination run in Pune

PUNE: Glitches in the CoWIN app continued to adversely impact Covid-19 vaccine drive in the city on Tuesday.
Three major private hospitals in Pune — Deenanath Mangeshkar, Bharati and Noble — were left unable to launch their vaccination drives after administrators could not login to the CoWIN database. Officials said alternative vaccination sites had to be set up at another hospital to accommodate enroled beneficiaries.

The three hospitals had no choice but to cancel as the state government has mandated that registrations of beneficiaries have to be online.
Dr Sanjay Deshmukh, deputy director of health services (Pune region) said on Tuesday that barring the three hospitals, CoWIN operations were largely smooth at other sites in the city and district. But he added that the system has to become more robust and faster.
System glitches were blamed for the overall slow pace of vaccinations in the district with about 12% completed till 1pm, 40% by 3pm and just 48% by the end of day (7pm). Health officials said the numbers could have been better if offline registrations were allowed to continue at the three hospitals.
State director of health services Dr Archana Patil told TOI that from Tuesday, beneficiary registration will have to be carried out via the CoWIN app.
“We have directed all sites to ensure no offline registrations are done,” she said.
But officials from the Pune Municipal Corporation said there have been login issues at some private hospitals. “The login IDs and passwords are yet to be created for some of these facilities. So we have had to defer sessions,” one official said.
Deputy medical director of Bharati, Jitendra Oswal, said PMC health officials informed them that they were unable to login to CoWIN via the ID and password assigned to the hospital.
“The PMC officials could not generate the list of beneficiaries who were set to take the shot on Tuesday. So we had to cancel the session at the hospital,” he said.
According to officials, an alternative session site had to be set up at Kamala Nehru Hospital to ensure there were six vaccination locations in the Pune city area. Meanwhile, officials from rural parts of the district said it was smooth sailing for them with CoWIN on day two. On Monday, state officials had told TOI that CoWIN snags they had flagged on Saturday had been rectified. The system, they said, was much more stable.
One medical officer said the system has made the verification and related processes easier to complete. “It takes hardly a minute or two to authenticate the identity of the beneficiary. This leads to a faster vaccination process,” the official said.
The CoWIN app has been designed to track beneficiaries and dosage of the Covid vaccines. However, it has been plagued by glitches right from Saturday. The system holds four critical modules: a user administrator module, beneficiary registration, vaccination and beneficiary acknowledgment, and status updates.
Essentially, the app first registers the beneficiary, sends out an SMS on time and location and then tracks the dosage given at sites.
However, on Saturday (day one of the Covid-19 vaccination drive), the app appeared to struggle across the district. Officials at vaccination sites said they had to fall back on paperwork they had prepared for beneficiaries. In fact, of the 31 vaccination sites in the district, 15 — mostly in the urban areas — had to opt for offline registration after CoWIN faltered. Many sites reported that those enroled had not received automated invites via SMS.
In the city areas, key hospitals and vaccination sites had to carry on the process manually. Officials added that they had to call people on Friday night to ensure good turnout on day one.
Senior district officials have said that problems with the digital database are expected during the initial days of the drive. All issues, they said, would be resolved soon.