Hundreds of elderly people in and around Calcutta waited for hours on Tuesday for a Covid-19 vaccine shot and many went back without getting one because of glitches in the registration portal and other technical problems.

Several private hospitals, including those that are planning to start vaccinating senior citizens and those above 45 with comorbidities on Wednesday, said they would record the personal details of a recipient and administer the shot if the technical problems persist.

They will later upload the details on the Co-Win2 app when it will function without glitches.

“The portal’s issues were not resolved and it was not functioning properly throughout the day. Session sites could not be created according to the plan. Because of that the vaccination programme suffered today, too,” said a health department official.

“We have informed the Centre about the portal issue. Central government officials told us they are working on the problems. From Wednesday, all private hospitals have been asked to start vaccinating senior citizens,” health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam said.

Some private hospitals said they had to refuse doses to many people as the number of individuals who had registered for Tuesday's vaccination was far more than their capacity. Also, the Co-Win2 portal, where all intended recipients from among the general public will have to register for Covid vaccines, was not functioning for hours in the morning, leading to long queues.

On Tuesday, the second day of vaccination for people above 60 and those above 45 with comorbidities, the Co-Win2 portal did not function between 10am and 12.30pm, said officials of several hospitals. When it finally started functioning, it was too slow.

“There is no system in the Co-Win2 portal to know how many people have registered and slotted for a particular day,” said an official of a private hospital.

At AMRI Hospitals Dhakuria, 546 people had turned up, though the hospital was prepared to administer only 200 doses. At the hospital's Mukundapur unit, 384 recipients had queued up, against the 200 doses the authorities had planned to administer.

“We had uploaded on the portal that our capacity is 200 but still it allowed registration of so many people. We will be administering the vaccine to all in phases over the next few days,” said an official of AMRI.

“The process of verification is done through the Co-Win2 portal. After it’s complete, a person can pay and get the dose. The verification was taking more than 30 minutes,” he said.

Amit Sharma had taken his 85-year-old father Hanuman Prasad Sharma to AMRI Hospitals Dhakuria twice on Tuesday, once at 10.30am and again at 3pm. But the elderly man could not be vaccinated.

“I was advised by security personnel to come back later when we went to the hospital at 10.30am. When we went back around 3pm, they did not allow us in. There were still 40 people inside waiting to be vaccinated and another 30 were in the queue outside,” Sharma said.

A board was put up announcing that vaccination had closed for the day.

“My father was disappointed. He has been mostly at home since the beginning of the pandemic. I lost my mother recently and he has become very lonely at home,” Sharma said.

AMRI officials advised him to check the hospital’s website, where they said they would announce the schedule for vaccinating those who did not get their shots on Tuesday.

Sushil Sethia, 57, a diabetic, had registered himself, his wife Neha Sethia, 50, also a diabetic and his father J.R. Sethia, 83. The three reached AMRI Dhakuria at 2pm only to find a long queue of vaccine hopefuls. They were told to come back another day.

Yet the three took a chance and went to the hospital again at 4.30pm. “I could do this because I live on Iron Side Road, not very far from the hospital,” said Sushil. They finally got their doses around 8pm.

Shibani Ghose, 62, and Apurba Ghose, 68, reached the Dhakuria hospital at 10.30am. They left the hospital after receiving their jabs at 4.30pm.

“The authorities need to speed up the process. There were people older than us who had to wait for a long time. At this age, it is very difficult to wait for so long. I do not know why it took six hours to get a dose,” said Shibani.

The couple had registered through the Co-Win2 portal on Monday evening.

They were among the handful who received text messages confirming their registration.

At Medica Superspecialty Hospital, where around 600 persons were vaccinated, officials said they were overwhelmed by the turnout.

“There is no way to know when or how many people are coming for the vaccination. We are allocating slots to those who are getting registered at our hospital through the help desk. But those who are registering independently are not getting any slot, causing congestions,” said an official of Medica.

The hospital in the afternoon started giving doses to people after taking down their details and registered them in the evening.

Many hospitals that will start the drive on Wednesday said they would follow the similar process to reduce confusions and delays.