Two First Dose Certificates: How Registration Errors Are Hurting Some | Noida News – Times of India

Noida has given 18.1 lakh first doses and 10.1 lakh second doses. 22.7 lakh first and 11.2 lakh second doses have been given in Ghaziabad

Noida/Ghaziabad: The NCR cities of Noida and Ghaziabad may be focusing on getting their entire target population vaccinated, but registration errors are proving to be a hindrance, posing some odd challenges in the process.
One such is some fully vaccinated recipients ending up with two first dose certificates as they re-registered on the CoWin portal for a second shot with a different mobile number.
Covid vaccinations have been in phases, based on age groups, since January’s rollout and vaccine appointments are both pre-scheduled and walk-in. Errors have been noticed especially where registration was done at the vaccination centre.
Officials said the first dose recipients are those who haven’t received their certificate even after getting the shot several months ago. At many centers where manual registration was done, certificates could not be uploaded online as wrong phone numbers were entered or provided by the recipients. In these cases, although the recipient had a physical slip with reference ID, there was no online certificate.
In instances where two different mobile numbers were used for two doses, both certificates downloaded from two CoWin accounts reflect the first dose as the system could only generate a second dose certificate when the first dose was taken. This, officials said, is leading to duplication, which is affecting the overall vaccination numbers to an extent.
“There are many types of technical and clerical errors, but these two are the most common. It is important for everyone to address these as the final vaccination certificate may soon become mandatory in many places. Anyone facing problems can dial the helpline number (1800-419-2211) and register their complaint,” said Gautam Budh Nagar vaccination officer Neeraj Tyagi.
Tyagi agreed that some other doses are not being added to the district count due to duplication. “We are getting around 50-60 complaints every day,” he said.
Moreover, in many private facilities where vaccination was done, the details of recipients were not entered in the system. When the Health Department took the initiative, the private centers assured that the problems would be resolved, but so far only a few have taken action.
There are also recipients who have lost their SIM cards and have not replaced them, making it difficult to register for a second dose. “We fixed the issues where the complainants were able to provide proof of their first dose,” said a Ghaziabad health official.
Ghaziabad officials claimed that the number of such complaints has now come down. “These days, we hardly get one or two cases in a day. Few months back, there used to be a multitude of complaints regarding certificates,” said the official. Noida has given 18.1 lakh first doses and 10.1 lakh second shots so far. So far, 22.7 lakh first doses and 11.2 lakh second doses have been given in Ghaziabad.