Coronavirus vaccine registration for all citizens aged above 18 opened up last evening on Wednesday, and after some server crashes and glitches, the CoWIN portal registered over 1.32 crore people. More than 35 lakh people registered in the first hour after launch on the Cowin.gov.in portal.

Appointments for people aged 18-44 will be available when State Governments and private vaccination centres schedule sessions, the Centre said. India began the vaccination process on January 1, starting with health and frontline workers. The second phase began on March 1 wherein all users above the age of 45 were allowed to take the vaccine with conditions.

Starting May 1, all citizens aged above 18 are eligible to take the COVID-19 vaccine in India. This is part of the government’s more ‘liberalised and accelerated Phase 3 strategy of COVID-19 vaccination’, due to rising number of cases in the country. The registration process began 4pm on Saturday, April 28, and government announced (via the official Aarogya Setu account) that over 1.32 crore people registered in just one day.

There were some initial glitches, probably because the portal was handling more than 50,000 API calls per second. The Aarogya Setu handle also tweeted that more than 35 lakhs people registered in the first hour after launch of 18 plus registration on http://cowin.gov.in.

While registrations were possible, even after the glitches and slow servers, appointments are still not available for those in the 18-44 age group. The Aarogya Setu Twitter account says that “Appointments for 18-44 will be available when State Governments and Private Vaccination Centers schedule vaccination sessions.”

News Source : India Today