Maharashtra public health minister Rajesh Tope on Saturday announced suspension of the Covid-19 vaccination drive in the state till Monday owing to “problems in the CoWin app”.
The app has been created by the Centre for managing registration for the inoculation. “Not just in Maharashtra, everywhere in the country this app created problems in the execution of vaccination drive. We have decided to suspend the vaccination for the next two days,” Tope said.
“On January 8, when dry run was conducted, and again today I specifically pointed out problems with the CoWin app and Union Minister Harsh Vardhan said he will look into it,” the minister said.
Earlier, a senior health department official in Maharashtra had said that owing to problems in the App, text messages were not sent to many persons who were supposed to get on the vaccine dose on Saturday.
The State government had planned inoculation of 28,500 health workers on the first day but the problems in COWIN, which were noticed on late Friday night, could not be fixed till Saturday evening,” the official said.
“We could not use it to generate SMSes to intimate health workers that they should come to the inocula etion centre to receive the jab. In the absence of SMS, the health worker cannot a come to the centre for inoculation,” he said.
Therefore, to avoid any further problems due to the CoWin app, the authorities have decided to suspend the vaccination drive till January 18.
