KOCHI: Getting a vaccine slot via the CoWIN web portal is one of the biggest challenges people are facing these days. The tech savvy ones, however, have found an easy way to book free slots using parallel web apps, which are being developed and circulated within different groups. Though many websites and apps offer real-time alerts on availability of slots at different centres, this specific type of app automatically books a slot whenever vacancies are updated in the CoWIN portal.
As per the details available about the web app in github, it can “continuously track for availability of vaccine and proceed with booking on your behalf if you are logged in. Please register on CoWIN, add beneficiaries and then, come back here for automated bookings. When there’s availability, the app will automatically attempt for a booking based on your preferences.”
Meanwhile, a section of techies has come out against these apps, pointing out that they have made it much more difficult for the lakhs of technologically-challenged people in the state.“The digital divide between the haves and have-nots could not be starker. People with access to better technology have a clear advantage when it comes to booking a vaccine slot. Moreover, people with coding skills create lines of code that can automate the vaccination booking process without having to play the fastest finger first. Where does that leave people without access to technology and skills, and only have feature phones. There are around 550 million feature phone users in India,” said Shahid Ameen, senior SEO analyst.
“A lot of web applications have surfaced recently to help people get alerts and book vaccine slots with much ease. But not many are aware of it,” said Manu Zacharia, cyber security expert and member of Data Security Council of India.
Meanwhile, Nandkishore Harikumar, CEO of Technisanct, said it was a fact that cyber experts are making use of open source APIs of Aarogya Setu and CoWIN to develop these kind of web applications. “However, we also need to look at the positive side of this. We should start using such web apps more widely to help people get slots for vaccination,” he said.