India's COVID-19 vaccination drive faces obstacle

Gulf Today Report 

India’s COVID-19 vaccination drive struggles on the first day due to technical difficulties in the app used for coordination, according to officials involved in the programme.

Co-Win, the coordinating app was developed by the Indian government to help healthcare workers manage and monitor the immunisation programme.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched what his government has described as the "world's largest vaccination programme" on Saturday to rein in the pandemic in India.

Unfortunately, a lot of healthcare workers scheduled for the vaccination said they did not get any message alert on Saturday. 

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"We were planning to vaccinate 28,500 people on Saturday but could do only 18,328 because of glitches in the Co-Win app," said the official.

India had plans of vaccinating more than 300,000 people on the first day but only 191, 181 were inoculated.

In Odisha, officials had to use printout due to the technical issues.

"The system performance and speed was improved and is being further optimised," Manohar Agnani, additional secretary, ministry of health and family welfare, said on Saturday.