The president of Doctors Manitoba says numerous health-care workers were frustrated by the COVID-19 vaccine booking system, which was swamped with more than 100,000 calls over the weekend.
“We heard from a number of physician colleagues this weekend that it was a very frustrating experience for them,” Doctors Manitoba president Dr. Cory Baillie said.
“I just spoke with one colleague who spent his entire weekend trying to get through to the COVID immunization booking system, and it would constantly ring busy, or be connected and then be on hold for 20 minutes and then the call would be disconnected, so definitely a frustrating experience.”
The province has started booking 900 vaccination appointments for eligible health-care workers, and Manitoba’s chief provincial public health officer said about two-thirds of those spots were filled by early Monday afternoon. In a news release Sunday, the province urged Manitobans to review the eligibility criteria before calling to book an appointment, to avoid overwhelming the booking system.
“We hope that as this goes forward, a better system to organize vaccination scheduling is arranged,” Baillie said.
Health-care workers working in acute or long-term care facilities who are over the age of 60 are eligible for the first round of vaccines, as well as health-care workers in critical care units who are over the age of 50.
Those working at COVID-19 immunizations clinics are also eligible.
“We knew the priority group was going to be much larger than the 900 initial doses available. We know that for the coming months, demand for this vaccine is going to be much higher than supply,” chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said during a press conference Monday.
Roussin says there were a few factors that caused the booking system to become overwhelmed, including the phone number being shared broadly and health-care workers not being honest in their screening.
“The phone number that shared with eligible health-care providers got released publicly, and so there was hundreds of thousands of calls made in a relatively short period of time,” Roussin said.
“Unfortunately, there were many people who were not honest with the initial screening approach, so many of the call centre attendants were screening out people who tried to screen in and it set a delay up.”
Roussin says despite the hiccups, the province is still on track to have all 900 appointments filled by the end of the day Monday.
“Even though it was quite a frustrating process over the weekend, our program was not delayed at all,” he said. “So we plan to go ahead with the vaccination program right on schedule.”