The ?Great Gamble?: The story of CoWIN, India?s vaccination portal

More than 10 million people signed up in 8 hours, causing CoWIN, which is the Indian government’s vaccine booking portal, to crash. When India’s vaccines rolled out for older adults and people with comorbidities, problems ranged from not getting text alerts after having a vaccine to problems with booking slots. “While the website’s user interface was fine, (navigating) it is arduous because one has to keep refreshing the page in order to see updated (vaccine availability) information,” Ranjini Rao, a marketing communications professor at Commits College in Bengaluru, India, told Medical News Today.In early May, the Indian government said that walk-in vaccinations would not be allowed for people aged 18–44 years, making registration on CoWIN mandatory. So the bot I built keeps trawling the CoWIN website and Aarogya Setu app every 1.35 seconds, seeking out these new openings and sending out alerts to people who have signed up for them.” With slots vanishing seconds after they open up, these notifications can give people an edge when they attempt to book vaccines. “Sometimes, you would see a number in yellow indicating there’s a slot, but in the 5 seconds that you put in the captcha/code to book it, it would say that the vaccination center is fully booked.” One time, a new vaccination center in Basu’s neighborhood indicated that it had over 100 vaccines available, and yet, when she logged in, there were no slots. Even as urban, educated people struggle with the CoWIN platform, many expect the situation to deepen the country’s already skewed digital divide, making immediate access to a vaccine even more difficult for the multitude of India’s rural poor. “While there is a need for a technological backbone like CoWIN that can help us record and keep track of vaccination data, there are some challenges that need to be overcome too,” said Dr. Anant Bhan, a researcher in bioethics and global health and a visiting professor at Yenepoya University in Mangaluru, India.