Calling manual data-entry error technical glitch is baseless: Health Ministry

New Delhi, May 9 Calling a manual data-entry error a technical glitch is a baseless argument, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday after some media reports alleged that technical glitches in CoWIN have resulted in two certificates being issued to 2.5 lakh beneficiaries in Pune for taking the first dose of Covid vaccine.

"There could be a scenario where a beneficiary gets his first dose of vaccine along with his spouse or parent after registering under the other person's mobile number. And the same beneficiary gets his second dose individually under his own mobile number with a different identity card. It should come as no surprise that the beneficiary would end up with two different first dose certificates, as the system would rightfully recognise these as two different individuals," the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

It further said that while such a manual data-entry error may have occurred, the CoWIN system is not ignorant to such possibilities and provides a robust grievance management system. Eight issues that were commonly observed and widespread have been incorporated for individuals to digitally rectify, with a provision at CSCs and a helpline to call upon. Similarly, any individual can also merge his/her two first dose certificates with ease, provided there is a match in name, age and gender and the two registered accounts are known to the individual.

The assumption that the system must recognise two first dose certificates of a beneficiary registered with two different mobile numbers and photo ID proofs is preposterous. With a country of a billion plus, there may be hundreds of thousands of individuals with the same name, age and gender, said the ministry.

"In case a beneficiary uses a separate mobile number for the second dose and schedules a vaccination, it will automatically be recognised as a first dose for the beneficiary. Furthermore, the same identity proof is not allowed to be used across two different mobile numbers," said the ministry in the statement.

It also added that there is a provision for scenarios where an individual may have provided two different identity proofs under the same mobile number registered. If the name, age and gender match as per the photo ID proofs submitted by the beneficiary, CoWIN prompts for merging the two first dose certificates to give a single fully vaccinated certificate for both the doses.

"CoWIN is a versatile platform which has scaled up for the entire population of the country at a record speed. It is rather disappointing to see a human error being characterised as a technical glitch to discredit the competence of the team maintaining this digital public good day and night," the ministry added.

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