How I registered for my Co-Win vaccination online.
As you may know that getting slots online for vaccination through Co-Win portal is tough. Assuming you have already completed your basic phone number and ID card registration then there are basically two problems to solve to get those vaccine slots.
Problem 1: Real-time notification of vaccine slots.
For non tech-savvy: Register on sites like under45.in and get Telegram messages whenever there are new slots available. It’s one of the most convenient way. For increasing vaccine centers coverage or finding vaccine centers with available slots near to you use this tool smarttask.io and get notifications on your email.
For tech-savvy: Try exploring the Co-Win public API’s to get these notifications yourself.
Problem 2: Acting quickly!
Now you know that there are new slots available therefore you’ll need to rush through the Co-Win site and schedule before all slots are booked. Since there are thousands of users refreshing the search page every min therefore you may not be able to book the slots at all.
I was so fed up with repeating the login step that I had to write a selenium automation script to automate the login process. Every time after receiving those slot notification messages I would just type “cowin” in my terminal and phone number entry and OTP generation would be done automatically.
Basically, It helped me get my vaccine slot by saving some precious seconds.
Ending notes:
- This slot booking problem may not be applicable to all.
- Keep refreshing the search page to get accurate slot information.
- If you are interested in the automation script and wish to replicate the same in your machine then refer this GitHub repository.
- Hopefully this registration problem should be resolved soon.
