Mumbai: CoWIN app fails again, BMC has to call recipients

The civic body generated messages to 4,000 people via the app for Tuesday's vaccination drive but it did not deliver them

Even though it generated 4,000 messages for vaccine recipients on the CoWIN app on Monday, the alerts did not reach most health workers and the BMC started calling people in the evening. The civic body had decided to go ahead with the vaccination drive on Tuesday irrespective of how the app worked and had been verifying with war rooms at ward-level throughout the evening if the alerts were getting delivered. While on Friday, ahead of the first day of the drive, messages could not be generated, on Monday they did not get delivered.

The civic body started contacting shortlisted recipients via the war rooms.

After a break of two days, it was decided that the vaccination drive would resume on Tuesday across 10 centres — nine civic ones and one state-run at the JJ Hospital. The target for the day was 4,000.

On the other hand, those who missed out on the vaccine on Day 1 would be considered for the vaccine at the end of the first phase.

On the first day of the vaccination drive’s first phase on Saturday, 1,926 health workers were vaccinated. With technical glitches in the CoWIN app, which didn’t send messages to beneficiaries on Friday, the drive was suspended.

Dr Mangla Gomare, executive health officer of the BMC, told mid-day, “The BMC initiated the old system and started trying to contact all 4,000 people shortlisted for the drive over phone via ward-level war rooms.”

Gomare had earlier in the day said that the messages had been generated and that they were hoping for them to be delivered.

“The errors in the application have been rectified, so we are resuming the drive Tuesday onwards. The plan remains the same as before — vaccinating 4,000 health workers in a day,” Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani had said earlier on Monday.

Single shift at centres

While earlier the drive was to be held throughout all days of the week, as per instructions from the central government, it will be held four days a week on Tuesday-Wednesday and Friday-Saturday. The BMC even planned to increase the number of people covered daily from 4,000 to 8,000 in two shifts, the plan has been postponed and the drive shall be conducted in one shift from 9 am to 5 pm.

With regards to the over 2,000 people who did not get the vaccine despite being registered, Gomare said, “We are not sending them a message now. These people will be considered for the vaccine at the end of the first phase.”

The drive will be conducted at 39 booths across nine civic-run centres at Nair hospital, KEM Hospital, Sion hospital, Cooper hospital, VN Desai Hospital, Bhabha hospital, Dr Ambedkar Shatabdi Hospital,  Rajawadi Hospital, COVID jumbo centre at BKC and one booth at the centre at state-run JJ hospital.

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