Rekha Murthy knows a thing or two about navigating a website.
But even Murthy, who has an extensive background in designing online user experiences, was stunned when she and her mother began clicking through websites Wednesday morning to register her father for a COVID-19 vaccine, as the state opened for shots for 75-year-old residents. and op.
“I literally worked for years in designing user experiences,” Murthy told the Herald. “This is an area I know and I’m blunt.”
Three hours later, a myriad of third-party websites and a few failed registration attempts later, Murthy finally secured her father a lock at the mass vaccination center at Springfield’s Eastfield Mall, about a dozen miles from her family’s Longmeadow home.
‘We had a year and we knew there would be a vaccine. “I want to be forgiving of the fact that states have been under tremendous pressure to care for people with COVID,” Murthy said. “But it’s horrible and so unfair.”
Murthy’s frustrations were echoed across the Commonwealth on Wednesday after Massachusetts opened the vaccine registry for residents 75 years and older before its Phase 2 vaccination on Monday.
“There’s a lot of confusion, frustration, anger and chaos,” said Sen. Rebecca Rausch, D-Needham, after being called by voters all day. “It’s not only a disappointment and bad service, but also deadly.”
The problems started not long after some registration portals were launched at midnight. Residents and their loved ones soon encountered outdated information, problems on third-party websites on which the state relies to book appointments, and wait in long virtual queues to find that no appointments are available.
‘I have no idea why they’re getting it ready to use. It’s just not. It does not work. It’s opaque, it’s confusing, it’s furious, “said 77-year-old Senator Patricia Jehlen, D-Somerville, after trying to get an appointment for herself. ‘Why not a central register from the beginning? Why not use hospitals? They have capacity. But instead we have 25 different small organizations. ”
Government Charlie Baker encouraged patience during an afternoon press conference, pointing out that the more than 1 million Massachusetts residents over the age of 75 who will have access to vaccines on Monday are more than the total amount of doses the state has received so far. Plus, according to him, not everyone eligible for Phase 1 has yet completed their two-dose regimen.
“If you can not make an appointment right away, you have to be patient about it,” he said. “We understand the difficulty involved, but keep an eye on the site.”
Baker said the state is working to create additional resources for booking appointments and that “more time slots will be added on an ongoing basis as we get extra inventory.”
But he said “unless there is a major change in the federal distribution over this, we expect we will get more capacity than we have vaccinated to serve.”
Baker encouraged family members and friends to help older residents book their appointments. Among them was Beth Kontos, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, who spent four hours trying to book an appointment for her 92-year-old mother. Eventually, she had to use several computers and her cell phone to do the work.
“She has a mobile phone, she does not have internet, she does not have a computer. She constantly says, “I’m so happy to have kids who can help me,” Kontos said. “Sometimes I’m almost in tears of worry because we can help my mother, but I can only imagine who the person is who does not have someone to help them.”