New Delhi, March 1 (IANS): The excitement for getting vaccinated on Day 1 of the third phase of massive immunization drive turned into a chaos after the CoWIN portal kept shutting down intermittently while processing the inoculation exercise, several hospitals complained while speaking to IANS.

It resulted into hours long delay for those who came early for registration on-site and even those who self-registered through the portal.

Many hospitals like Moolchand closed walk-in registration as early as 1 p.m. to control the crowd waiting for their turn to get inoculated against the novel Coronavirus.

Madhu Handa, Medical Superintendent at south Delhi-based Moolchand Hospital said that the CoWIN portal is crashing every now and then.

Many alleged that they were not told that the vaccination would start from 12 noon.

Jaswinder Singh from Gurugram, who brought along his father and father-in-law to Moolchand Hospital said that he has been waiting for over two hours. My parents are above 80 years of age and they are forced to stand in a queue. There is no management," he said.

"I chose private facility for better convinience. If this is the situation here, god knows how things will unfold at government centres," said 70-year-old Tarkeshwar Rana, who has been in queue for vaccination since 10.30 a.m.

The situation at Moolchand Hospital was similar to other hospitals. Many hospitals reported same experience and blamed the technical issues of CoWIN.

"We have the capacity to manage but the delay caused in vaccination is making them anxious. Besides, the staff deployed from the government is also not cooperating," a senior doctor from a large private hospital told IANS.