When the City of San Antonio’s Covid-19 registration website went live on Saturday at 9 a.m., the 9,000 available slots filled up within six minutes. In Michigan, more than 20,000 people simultaneously tried to enter a health system’s portal for Covid vaccinations, which paralyzed the system.
© Sarah Blesener for The New York Times
Healthcare workers are preparing to administer Covid-19 vaccinations at a site that opened Friday in Morris County, NJ. The demand for the vaccine is so great across the country that many people find it difficult to get bookings.
As states try to sharpen the distribution of vaccines committed through confusion and mistakes, the online registration sites are crucial. But the problems they face reveal another challenge to getting Americans vaccinated: there are many, many more people who want to be vaccinated than there are opportunities to get the chance.
Load error
“The registration system works according to design, but there is much greater demand than the current supply,” said dr. Colleen Bridger, an assistant city manager, said in a statement. “As we receive more doses from the state of Texas, there will be more appointments available in the coming days and weeks, and we will keep the public informed of registration opportunities.”
The largest healthcare system in Michigan, Beaumont Health, had problems with its website on Friday, said Hans Keil, the system’s chief information officer. Beaumont Health, which operates several hospitals in the Metro Detroit area, recently announced plans to offer residents of 65 and older vaccinations, and about 25,000 people were simultaneously trying to access the online portal, Mr. Keil said. The portal did not crash, but many users could not access.
“We really need to reconsider how we should do our capacity planning,” Keil said.
On Thursday, Miami-Dade County introduced an online registration tool for appointments. Provincial officials said they would have a limited number of slots for people 65 and older. The available slots were filled within 20 minutes, said Luisana Pérez Fernández, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.
In Georgia, officials tried to export vaccines to individuals 65 and older, starting Monday in DeKalb County. On Thursday, the DeKalb County Board of Health website experienced ‘latency issues’ while individuals reported for the shot.
There was also a big demand offline.
In Montgomery County, Tennessee, more than 1,000 appointments were scheduled Tuesday through a telephone system before the lines crashed that afternoon, officials said. On Wednesday, a new website and phone number were added to handle the cargo.
Even in countries where online registration seems to be going well, some people have waited a long time.
In Indiana, more than 21,000 people aged 80 and older signed up for appointments for the first 90 minutes that registration was open, and a total of 35,000 people signed up an hour later. (In an earlier version of this article, their age group 65 and older were misrepresented.) Health department officials said about 200 people are experiencing delays.
“Individuals may experience waiting times due to a great deal of interest,” reads a statement from the department. “The registration system is designed to put visitors in a queue when the volume is high.”
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