Nearly 1.33 crore Indians register on CoWin on first day for 3rd phase of vaccination starting on May 1

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New Delhi: More than 1.33 crore Indians registered themselves on the first day of registration on CoWin portal for the third phase of Covid vaccination starting May 1.

In the third phase of the vaccination drive, everyone above the age of 18 will be eligible to get vaccinated against Covid-19. On the first day of registration for the COVID-19 vaccination, many also complained about the technical problems they faced trying to register themselves on the CoWin portal.

Some of them even complained that the portal was not responding while others complained that it had crashed. The Union Health Ministry later clarified that the media reports that the server has crashed “are incorrect and are without any basis”.

The Ministry said that it witnessed more than 80 lakh people registered themselves on the portal, with 3 hours from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm on Wednesday. 

It added that the portal received 383 million API hits, initially as high as 2.7 million hits per minute and a total of 1.45 crore SMSs have been successfully delivered.

The Health Ministry highlighted that vaccination is a critical component of the containment and management strategy of the Government of India in its fight against the Covid pandemic.

"A liberalised and accelerated Phase 3 strategy of Covid-19 vaccination will be implemented from May 1. Registration for the new eligible population groups commenced today from 4 pm. Potential beneficiaries can register directly on the Co-WIN portal (cowin.gov.in) or through the Aarogya Setu app," the Ministry said.

The government claimed that the Co-WIN software is a robust, dependable and agile technology and it offers anytime anywhere registration for Covid-19 vaccination.

"The capacity of the servers and other parameters have been ramped up to match the unprecedented scale of immunisation so that the Co-WIN system can provide citizen-centric services. Inclusivity, speed and scalability have been kept in mind while designing the unique digital platform with all components being portable and synchronous without excessive and unnecessary dependencies," the ministry said.

The Ministry also categorically denied reports suggesting that the Co-WIN platform was unresponsive/overshooting the server capacity and was not able to respond to the unprecedented number of registrations taking place.

"It is clarified that the media reports that the server has crashed are incorrect and are without any basis. The server supporting the Co-WIN digital portal continues to work smoothly at its highest efficiency," it said.

People registering on the platform are mostly the age group of 18 to 44 years. Vaccinations will begin on Saturday for everyone above 18 from May 1 (Saturday) under a more "liberalised and accelerated Phase 3 strategy of COVID-19 vaccination".

Those who want to take the vaccine are to go to - https://www.cowin.gov.in/home and click on the "register/sign-in" option.