About 1.3 crore registered for vaccination, many struggled to find a slot
Over 1.3 crore Indians registered themselves online on the government's dedicated portal Cowin on Wednesday for the mass vaccination drive. However, a lot of them struggled a lot to get themselves registered and complained about the technical problems they faced while trying to register themselves on the Cowin portal. Some of them even complained that the portal was not responding while others said that it had crashed.
In the second wave of infection, it has been seen that at least 300,000 people test positive each day for the past week. At this moment, India's best hope is to vaccinate its vast population. On Wednesday it opened registrations for everyone above the 18 to be vaccinated from Saturday. Many state governments have already said that may not be able to begin the drive on May 1 as they are still short of supplies. Another major roadblock is the large number of people registering themselves for vaccination.
As the situation stands, COVID-19 vaccination is currently available in private hospitals only for 45-plus people till the end of the month. Thereafter the Centre-supported vaccine rollout for this category will be available only in government hospitals. The Centre has recently announced that states, private hospitals, and corporates can access 50% production of Covishield and Covaxin for the 18 and above category.