Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation on Thursday repeated calls for a COVID-19 vaccination pre-registration list as the state opens the door to more appointments, describing the morning’s state website crash as an unacceptable glitch for untold residents trying to schedule a shot.
The state’s online booking portal — vaxfinder.mass.gov — was unavailable for more than two hours Thursday, just as residents older than 65 and those with multiple health conditions officially became eligible for appointments.
...Rep. Katherine Clark, who led the delegation letter sent to Baker last week, said it’s hardly a surprise Massachusetts residents are eager to be inoculated. Since the pandemic began, officials have confirmed 533,024 total COVID-19 cases across the state as of Wednesday. Newly reported case totals have trended downward for weeks, but state and federal officials have still looked to ramp up vaccination.
“What we need is a system that matches the volume,” Clark tweeted after the temporary crash. “With a waitlist, residents wouldn’t have to flood a website every minute or hour, or be scrambling from link to link. We need to do better.”
Many website users have complained that they had to work through multiple pages entering information only to find the previously available appointment slot hadn’t been held, forcing people to start over.
“Absolute colossal failure,” one user tweeted of the website. “Constant crashes, application failures, appointments that get lost mid-way through registration. Surely, someone in the Baker administration could have foreseen this. Totally unacceptable.”
...As of Thursday, more than 930,000 first doses of the vaccine have been administered; nearly 330,000 residents have received a second dose and are fully vaccinated, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Eighty-three percent of the doses that have been shipped to providers so far have been reported as administered, DPH said Thursday.
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