About 80 lakh people registered for the third phase of the Covid-19 inoculation drive on the Centre’s CoWin application on Wednesday between 4 pm to 7pm, the Union health ministry said.
The third phase of the vaccination drive will commence from May 1, during which everyone above 18 years will be able to avail the Covid-19 vaccines. The registration for the third phase began today at 4 pm.
Soon after the government portals opened for registration, there were reports of both CoWin and Aarogya Setu apps crashing due to excessive load.
Several users took to social media to complain that they were unable to access the apps. While for a few the registration portals did not respond, for many the apps crashed.
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The Union health ministry, however, said that the media reports that the server has crashed "are incorrect and are without any basis".
"The server supporting the CoWin digital portal continues to work smoothly at its highest efficiency. People are registering on the platform, mostly of age-group 18-44. It witnessed more than 80 lakh people registered themselves on the portal, with 3 hours from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm," it said.
Sharing some of the statistics appertaining to the first three hours (4-7 pm), the ministry said that the portal 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.
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"These statistics indicate that far from crashing or performing slowly, the system is performing without any glitches. It is recording 55,000 hits per second and is completely stable. Detailed statistics relating to registration, vaccinations, can be seen on dashboard.cowin.gov.in," the ministry said in its statement.
As the registration opened up at 4 pm, some people on social media complained that the portal was not responding, while others complained that it had crashed.
At 4.35 pm, a tweet from the verified Twitter handle of the Aarogya Setu mobile application said the CoWIN portal is working and that there was a minor glitch at 4 pm, which was fixed.
"Cowin portal is working. There was a minor glitch at 4 pm that was fixed. 18-plus can register," it said.
At 4.54 pm, a tweet from the same handle stated, "Vaccination appointments for 18-plus will be possible once the state governments and private vaccination centres schedule vaccination sessions. Registration is happening on cowin.gov.in."
Potential beneficiaries can register directly on CoWIN portal cowin.gov.in or through the Aarogya Setu app.
The CoWIN software is a robust, dependable and agile technology. It offers anytime and 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 COWIN system provide citizen-centric services, the statement said.
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Inclusivity, speed and scalability have been kept in mind while designing the unique digital platform with all components being portable, synchronous without excessive and unnecessary dependencies, it stated.
After registration, taking an appointment to get a Covid-19 vaccine jab would be mandatory for those aged between 18 and 44 years as walk-ins will not be allowed initially, officials had said.
(With PTI inputs)
