Thiruvananthapuram: Making over hundreds of searches for vaccination slots on the CoWIN portal in a day can get your account blocked for 24 hours.
Restrictions were brought in to prevent slot booking using computer programs and software robots (bots) on CoWin. In case of excessive use, the account would be blocked as it would be deemed to be bot activity. But there is nothing wrong in using parallel platforms to know information on slot updates.
How?
•If the search request is submitted more than 20 times in 15 minutes, the user will get logged out.
•In case of 50 log outs in a day, the account will be blocked for 24 hours. In other words, the restriction could be imposed if the OTP is generated over 50 times and the search request submitted. The account will be active again after 24 hours.
• It is also advised not to submit more than one refresh, reload and schedule requests during an interval of three seconds.
What should be done?
•Avoid clicking on the search button multiple times continuously after logging in. Search for slots based on the alert messages received on Telegram and other tools.
•You can search for vaccine slots based on district, pin code and map on the home page itself without logging into the portal. The new terms are not applicable to such searches. Login only when you see the slot.
•Instead of logging in multiple times, find out the slot updation time via official handles or through parallel platforms such as under45.in and above45.in and then log in to the portal.
Making corrections on vaccination certificates
Now, vaccine recipients can also correct the number of the ID in the vaccination certificate on the CoWIN portal. This is in addition to the feature for rectifying any errors in name, date of birth and gender. Though the feature ran into some technical glitches, it was made available from Thursday evening again. Corrections can be made only once.
How to rectify errors
•Log in to CoWIN portal (cowin.gov.in) using the registered mobile number. From the 'Raise an Issue' option, select the profile of the person on whose certificate corrections have to be made. Then select the ‘Correction in Certificate' option from 'What is the issue?'.
•From name, date of birth, gender, and photo ID number, corrections can be made only for two. If you click on the fields to be corrected, the option will appear below. Once you hit 'Continue' and submit, you will get a message 'Your request has been submitted successfully' and 'is under processing'. As and when the request is approved, the new certificate can be downloaded.
