The Union Health Ministry has modified the Co-WIN app, the central government’s application to register people for the coronavirus drive, to allow on-spot beneficiary registrations, reported the Hindustan Times on Wednesday. With this upgrade, states can accommodate walk-ins.

Dr RS Sharma, chairman of the empowered group on Covid-19 vaccination, said that the decision was taken to deal with the problem of low turnout at some vaccine centres. “The average vaccination sessions allowed per site are 100, and we were told in some centres, fewer people were turning up,” he said. “We have made a provision in the app to also accommodate beneficiaries scheduled to take the jab on other dates.”

He clarified that while walk-ins have been allowed, beneficiaries who are registered to get the vaccine on that day would be given priority. “Those who are registered for the day will have to be vaccinated first, and others should be accommodated only if registered beneficiaries do not turn up,” Sharma said.

Sharma said that the changes made sense as a lot of resources would have otherwise gone to waste. He said that now any person who is eligible for the vaccine and is registered for another day can get the jab. “Why waste resources and time, since we have to vaccinate a particular number of healthcare workers anyway,” he said.

Sharma also refuted allegations that there were major glitches in the app. He said there have been minor glitches and procedural problems that were being rectified. “There are minor hiccups, which are normal to have when you put such a large-scale system in production,” he said. “Dry runs are one part but in real-time, there is always a possibility of encountering issues which may have been missed otherwise.”

The chief of the vaccination group said that the problems in the app could also depend on how tech-savvy is the person handling the software. He pointed out that data related to the vaccination can be manually uploaded data but it is meant for extreme situations and has to be done real-time to avoid a backlog problem.

Many states, including West Bengal, Bihar and Kerala, have said that technical glitches in the app were one of the reasons that they cannot meet their target for vaccinations. “The major problem is not people refusing the vaccine, it is the software,” Ajoy Chakraborty, West Bengal’s director of health services, told Scroll.in. “People are supposed to get an SMS intimating them of the time and place of the vaccine but many of them are not receiving it.”

On the second day of the drive, Maharashtra had to suspend the inoculation programme till Monday after problems emerged in the Co-WIN app. The immunisation programme in the state has resumed now.

The government has till 6 pm on Tuesday vaccinated 6,31,417 health workers. India plans to vaccinate around 30 crore people with two doses in the first six to eight months of the year. The recipients include 3 crore doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, to be followed by people who are either over 50 or have illnesses that make them vulnerable to Covid-19.

Two vaccines are being used for the immunisation programme – the Oxford University-AstraZeneca Covishield, produced by the Serum Institute of India, and Covaxin, a government-backed, indigenous one from Bharat Biotech.

Meanwhile, India on Wednesday registered 13,823 new cornavirus cases, taking the overall count to 1,05,95,660. The country’s toll rose by 162 to 1,52,718. India’s active cases stood at 1,97,201, while the number of recoveries reached 1,02,45,741.