Applicants swamp vaccine site
Published:Wednesday | March 24, 2021 | 12:15 AMNadine Wilson-Harris/Staff Reporter
The online portal to schedule appointments for the COVID-19 vaccine was bombarded with 128,000 hits on the first day, while more than 4,000 calls were fielded as Jamaicans sought to register for the jab.
The portal was opened to the public at 10 a.m. on Monday.
Up to Tuesday morning, more than 15,800 passwords were generated. Many of the individuals who engaged the system were not within the targeted groups, which are persons 75 years and older, as well as members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) or the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF). Those who are not in these groups were not able to register.
WATCH: Vaccination at The Golden Age Home
More than 4,000 people had successfully made appointments up to Tuesday morning, although there are 31,000 vaccination slots. The rush to set appointments has forced call centres to increase their agents, as about 30 per cent of the calls were not answered on the first day.
Health ministry officials are now appealing to persons not in the target groups to be patient and wait their turn. Would-be line skippers were clogging the system, said Dunstan Bryan, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health & Wellness.
“It does create a lot of traffic, and slows the ability of other persons who are registered to access and make an appointment,” he said.
Jamaica started administering the vaccine on March 10, approximately one year after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the country.
Approximately 64,400 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have been delivered here, including a gift of 50,000 from the Indian government.
As at Tuesday, 26,512 Jamaicans, including Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Opposition Leader Mark Golding, were vaccinated.
The majority of those vaccinated so far are healthcare workers, as more than 14,000 have received the jab. This represents 68 per cent of those in the health sector.
DANGEROUS SURGE
Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa F. Etienne, cautioned on Tuesday that the virus is surging dangerously in the Americas, for which more than 2.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been procured through the COVAX Facility.
Immunisation campaigns are currently under way in 33 of the 35 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that are members of PAHO. The organisation is assisting Haiti and Cuba, which have yet to start immunisation.
Etienne noted that in the Caribbean, the infection rate was a cause for concern in countries such as Jamaica, Cuba, Aruba, Curaçao, and Antigua and Barbuda.
“In Jamaica, cases have risen steadily for several weeks,” the PAHO director said.
“As the virus surges and hospitalisations rise, we urgently need to scale up vaccination among our most vulnerable populations.”
Almost 156 million doses of vaccine, including the COVAX deliveries, have been rolled out in the Americas.
Several residents at the Golden Age Home in Kingston were vaccinated on Tuesday as the Government expanded its efforts to inoculate the most vulnerable. According to the MOHW interim vaccination implementation plan, 174,987 elderly persons are being targeted.