Did you miss out this morning? You weren’t alone as site crashes, technical errors and long lines marked the opening of vaccine booking for people 18+ in Ontario hot spots
As the province's online booking system opens to anyone aged 18 and over in the 114 COVID-19 hot spots identified by the Ontario government, many reported numerous obstacles in the booking process.
Eligible residents across the province woke up Monday morning prepared and ready for the website to go live at 8 a.m.
Diana Rose, 31, was on her computer by 7:30 a.m., half an hour before bookings were supposed to be available. By 7:45 a.m. she was already in line, told she had a 40-minute wait, with around 20,000 people ahead of her. At 8:30 a.m. Rose had secured her appointment.
It went pretty fast and I got my appointment in half an hour. It's fairly straight forward," said Rose. I did have to clear my cache, but after that the website ran smoothly."
Rose is a resident of the M3H area in North York, but was only able to get her vaccine scheduled in Etobicoke as all of the centres near her were booked up.
Others weren't so lucky. Many were reporting more than an hour wait time just to access the booking portal, with tens of thousands of others already in the queue. Others were unable to select the 18 and older option on the site; those who changed browsers or cleared their cache seemed to have success after that.
Some were able to get through the line after waiting only to be told that their health card had been flagged as invalid.
The appointments, which will be available for the two weeks of May 3 and May 10, can be made through the province's online booking system or directly through public health units, if they have their own booking system.
The province said the expanded eligibility is part of a strategy to allocate 50 per cent of vaccine doses to the hot spots, up from the current share of 25 per cent.
Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, who is also in charge of emergency operations for the city, reported on Monday morning that an additional 180,306 vaccine appointments had opened up in the provincial booking system, between May 17 and June 6, in city-operated clinics.
At 9.30 a.m, Toronto Public Health tweeted that it was currently experiencing a higher than usual call volume on our hotline," and reminded residents that TPH staff do not have access to the provincial booking system and cannot book vaccine appointments over the phone.
Rhythm Sachdeva is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: rsachdeva@thestar.ca