Centre rubbishes technical glitch in CoWin; 'Redundant vaccine reports due to data error'

The Union Health Ministry has addressed the allegations of technical glitches in the CoWIN app which resulted in two certificates being issued to 2.5 lakh beneficiaries of the first COVID vaccine dose in Pune. In an official release, the Ministry called the argument of technical glitch 'baseless' and clarified that it is actually due to an error in data entry.

Stating that "CoWIN has successfully served as the Digital Backbone for India’s COVID-19 Vaccination Programme", the Ministry added that, "CoWIN has a robust Grievance Management System with ‘Raise an Issue’ feature".

Health Ministry explains the cause of 'technical glitch'

In the release, the Ministry said that the CoWIN platform provides three options to a beneficiary for making registrations before inoculation. The beneficiaries can register themselves on the platform through walk-in, online portal, or through helplines and CSCs (Common Services Centres) services. The platform also requires details such as the mobile number, name age and gender of the beneficiary along with an option to choose from nine photo identity proofs for completing the registration process.

"However, it must be noted that after receiving the first dose of vaccination, a beneficiary needs to schedule for or avail the second dose of the same vaccine with the same mobile number used at the time of the first dose of vaccination. This is the only mechanism for both the first and second dose details to be tagged to the same beneficiary", the Ministry.

It further clarified that if someone uses a separate mobile number for the second dose and schedules a vaccination, it will automatically be recognised as a first dose for the beneficiary. Also, the same identity proof is not allowed to be used across two different mobile numbers.

Moreover, the Centre also said that if an individual provided two different identity proofs under the same mobile number registered, CoWIN automatically prompts for merging the two first dose certificates to produce a single fully vaccinated certificate. In the release, the Ministry also said that just assuming that the system should recognise two first dose certificates made from different registered mobile numbers is 'preposterous'.

"With a country of a billion-plus, there may be hundreds of thousands of individuals with the same name, age, and gender", the release said.

Moreover, the Ministry raised another scenario wherein it explained that there could be individuals who registered for their first dose with the mobile number of their spouse or other relative but registered for the second dose with their own phone number. In this case, the certificate produced would show the beneficiary receiving just a single dose of the vaccine.

"CoWIN is a versatile platform which has scaled up for the entire population of the country at a record speed. It is rather disappointing to see a human error being characterised as a “technical glitch” to discredit the competence of the team maintaining this digital public good day and night", the Ministry said.