CoWIN server crashes as thousands of Indians rush to register for COVID-19 vaccination

• The registration for vaccination for those between 18-45 years old opened up finally, on Wednesday, at 4 p.m.
• Servers of the CoWIN app and website, UMANG app and Aarogya Setu app crashed.
• Earlier, hundreds of people had stayed up till 12 midnight on Wednesday to register for the app, only to know the vaccination wasn’t opening up until 4 pm.

The registration for vaccination for those between 18-45 years old opened up finally, on Wednesday, at 4 p.m. and as expected servers of the CoWIN app and website, UMANG app and Aarogya setu app crashed.

However, soon after the Aarogya Setu app started working. Additonally, the CoWIN website worked well for users, instead of the app.

Users took to Twitter to complain about the servers crashing. Earlier, users had also complained that they weren’t receiving the one time password (OTP) required to login to the apps.

Hundreds of people stayed up till 12 a.m. on Wednesday, as anticipation was high for the registration for vaccination for the 18-45 age population to open up, but to their disappointment the message still read “currently registration is allowed for citizens older than 45 years only.”

The Indian government had announced that registration for vaccination between 18-45 years old would start through the CoWIN and Aarogya Setu apps at 12 a.m. on April 28. However, through a Telegram channel for MyGov, an update had been sent that registrations would open at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

CoWIN servers down at 4 p.m. due to overwhelming server load

The crashing of the server at 4 p.m. due to heavy load didn’t come as a surprise to many.

The government servers are not designed to handle a higher number of connections at the same time. When many people try to access the same website, the servers get overstressed and fail to handle requests. In simple words, it's like a lot of people rushing inside a building that has a small entrance that can let only two people in at a time.

This comes with poor IT infrastructure to cut costs because server maintenance is an expensive task. This isn't the first time a government-led app has crashed or has faced server issues. For long now, the Indian Railways backed IRCTC has been at the centre point of all jokes for crashing repeatedly.