THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With online registration for Covid-19 vaccination made mandatory from Friday, there is utter confusion regarding the registration process due to technical glitches. This tends to misguide people who are clueless on how to proceed further. While registering themselves with the official cowin.gov.in portal, the users don’t get the schedule of the vaccination. The portal flashes the message that users did ‘register successfully’ after the One Time Password (OTP) generation. In addition, the users get a message saying ‘no appointments available till July 16’.
Meanwhile, ‘Arogyasethu’, which is also an app for online registration , shows distant places for a user to get vaccinated. If a user registers himself/herself with the help of this app, seeking a second dose of vaccination, the app schedules him/ her for the ‘first dose’ of vaccination.
According to the users, the online portals are yet to be streamlined. They blamed the technical glitches in the portals for the crowding at vaccination centres. For instance, N K Jayakumar, 63, hailing from Neyyattinkara, who had received the first dose of Covishield vaccines 50 days ago, is yet to receive the second dose due to the crowding at the centres. He registered on Cowin and Arogyasethu as both portals did not have a mechanism to guide the user to get vaccinated as early as possible during the testing times.
“I had received my first dose. So when I decided to register on Cowin.gov, as my second dose is due, I received the message that no appointments are available till July 16. When I checked with the others, they had received the same message. So I decided to register on Arogyasethu. With the help of this app, I got a message that my vaccination centre is at Brother’s Hospital in Palode. When I called up the hospital, they told me that there was no need for me to travel such a long distance. I was asked to wait for a few more days to get the app and the portal streamlined,” Jayakumar said.
But his is not an isolated case. Many people are struggling to register themselves with online portals and they end up getting the wrong information. For those who don;t know the online registration process, they will have to approach the nearby Akshaya centres. The crowd at Akshaya centres is a major cause for concern and the staff at these centres are also under pressure from people to get things done in quick time. Saritha R L, Director of Health Services, told TNIE that she will have a word with the IT team to get the issue fixed.