The CoWin portal and Aarogya Setu app crashed on Wednesday as people above 18 years rush to get themselves registered for vaccination against Covid-19. However, soon after the Aarogya Setu app started working.
The registration for the next phase of vaccination, which will begin on May 1, started at 4 pm today.
“CoWIN Server is facing issues. Please try later,” the message read.
According to government sources, the CoWIN site is getting almost 27 lakh hits a minute. Appointments will be based on slots made available by states and private vaccination centres, they said.
Registration is the first step to get an appointment online for the vaccination and the government has opened the window two days before the inoculation drive begins.
As walk-ins are not allowed at the vaccination centres in this phase, a prior appointment will have to be sought to avail of vaccination. The measure was taken to avoid crowding at centres. Also, vaccination is underway for people aged 45 and above and walk-ins are allowed for them.
Users took to Twitter to complain about the CoWin server crashing. Earlier, users had also complained that they weren’t receiving the one time password (OTP) required to login to the apps. Moreover, the crashing of the server at 4 pm due to heavy load didn’t come as a surprise to many.
Both Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech have revised prices for the vaccines. A single dose of SII’s Covishield is priced at Rs 400 for state governments and Rs 600 for private hospitals. Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin is priced at Rs 600 per dose for state governments and Rs 1200 per dose for private hospitals.
