BOSTON (AP) - Health care workers at the largest hospital system in Massachusetts were temporarily barred from signing up for the new COVID-19 vaccine after the online appointment system crashed amid a surge in demand on Wednesday night, system officials said.
The Mass General Brigham system had to shut down its signup system Wednesday after it slowed down because of heavy traffic from workers trying to register, The Boston Globe reported.
A notice on the website said it was facing technical problems “driven by a large volume of employees trying to self-schedule an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine.”
The health care system briefly shut down the website to fix problems and is reopening it for waves of workers throughout the day Thursday, Ann Prestipino, an incident commander at Mass General Brigham, told The Globe.
The last wave of employees will be allowed to sign up at 8 p.m.
The outage frustrated some workers who stayed up to register and were still locked out Thursday. Dr. Yuval Raz, a critical care and lung transplant physician, said on Twitter that he was “holding back tears.”
“Up all night after app crashed, in line this morning and still slots for today and tomorrow for vaccinations were filled before they cut the line,” Raz wrote.
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VIRUS BY THE NUMBERS
The number of newly confirmed coronavirus deaths rose by 44 on Thursday while the number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 increased by nearly 5,000.
The new deaths pushed the state’s confirmed COVID-19 death toll to 11,305 and its confirmed caseload since the start of the pandemic to more than 297,000.
The true number of cases is likely higher because studies suggest some people can be infected and not feel sick.
There were more than 1,870 people reported hospitalized Thursday because of confirmed cases of COVID-19, with more than 380 in intensive care units.
The average age of those hospitalized was 67.
The number of probable or confirmed COVID-19 deaths reported in long-term care facilities rose to 7,084.
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