Co-Win glitches hamper Covid vaccine dry run in Bengaluru

To give health workers an experience of Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN), uploading beneficiaries and vaccination session site details, are some of the stated objectives of a Covid vaccination dry run by the state health department. Ironically, even as the state gears up to receive the first consignment of 13.9 lakh Covid vaccine doses by January 10, the Co-WIN test link did not work at the eight session sites in Bengaluru on Friday.

A test link of Co-WIN and a dummy app for the vaccinator has been created for this purpose. None of the beneficiaries received an SMS with the time and location which is supposed to be generated by the Co-WIN app, medical colleges and hospitals said.

The Covid vaccination dry run was suppose to be underway from 9 am to 11 am at five government health facilities and three private health facilities: Singasandra primary health centre, Kengeri Community Health Centre, KR Puram General Hospital, Ulsoor Referral Hospital, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI), Aster CMI Hospital, Hebbal, Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), and Sapthagiri Medical College.

During the dry run, multiple steps of vaccination are assessed including operational facility, assembling beneficiaries with proper physical distance, checking identity, administering vaccine shots, cold chain maintenance, proper biomedical waste management, validation of data in Co-WIN app, observation for 30 minutes post vaccination, Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) management and above all comforting and reassuring the people who take the shots.

Hemanth Kumar, Nodal officer for Covid-19, Aster Hospitals, Bengaluru, said, "We never received the one-time password from the Co-WIN app. These are the glitches that shouldn't happen on the actual day of the vaccination. The dry run was only for 25 staffers, but when it happens for 100 beneficiaries, and I have not gotten the SMS then people will be left sitting in the waiting rooms and the vaccination cannot happen. We completed the dry run by the time they fixed it."

Dr Maheshwaran R, HOD, Community Medicine, Sapthagiri Medical College, said, "They installed the software but the Co-WIN app did not connect. It was very slow. This was not just our medical college, but all other facilities. At a time, everyone across the country would have tried to log in causing a technical lag. But we did all the operational exercises well. We took their Aadhaar and PAN cards for checking, and ticked off their name in the beneficiary list manually."

Dr DH Aswath Narayana, HOD, Community Medicine, KIMS, said, "There was some hitch regarding Co-WIN application and we gave the feedback accordingly. Government authorities agreed that it did not work. We continued manually. Since we didn't use the app, we don't have first hand experience. All we know is that we have to enter the data according to the training we received."

Dr Ranganath TS, HOD, Community Medicine, BMCRI, said, "We tried our level best. After entering the pin code, it is supposed to open but didn't. It worked in Mandya Medical College but in medical colleges in Bangalore it did not work. We did everything manually. If this happens on the actual vaccination day, we do not have the authority to administer the vaccine without the one-time password."