A little more than 104,000 people were logged onto the commonwealth’s booking portal, vaxfinder.mass.gov, shortly after 8:30 a.m. and were waiting in the “digital waiting room,” which was added to to prevent outages on the scheduling site, according to Gov. Charlie Baker.
The portal notes that as of around 8:30 a.m., fewer than 450 vaccination appointments still remain at the state’s large-scale immunization sites, though other locations may still be offering appointments.
The new waiting room feature was designed in the wake of the portal crashing last Thursday to ensure the site is constantly running and that people have a “smooth and uninterrupted experience,” the governor said at a press conference Wednesday at the Natick Mall, one of the state’s large-scale vaccination sites.
“If there’s high travel and traffic on the website, some users might be placed in the waiting room. The page will display more information about when you will be allowed to proceed, but it’s basically the equivalent of creating a line,” Baker said at the press conference.
Many residents were expected to wait more than an hour Thursday morning in the virtual waiting room, which was set up by Curative, a company that serves as the provider for multiple large-scale vaccination sites in Massachusetts.
Some super vaccination sites were already showing they were fully booked, though the state noted in a tweet that appointments will be added throughout the morning.
“If there is extremely high website traffic, you will be placed into a waiting room. If this happens, you will be told approximately how long the wait will be to look for open appointments.
People in the digital waiting room can remain on the site to be let into the portal automatically to book an appointment, or they can type in their email and leave the site to be notified later on when it’s their turn to fill out their required forms and schedule a time slot.
To prepare to book an appointment, the portal asks people to have their demographic information and insurance card or government-issued ID ready. Front and back photographs need to be taken of the card or ID.
“When it’s your turn, you’ll have 10 minutes to enter the website. Once you’re in, you’ll have plenty of time to book your slot,” the digital waiting room says. “We appreciate your patience. Thank you for doing your part and getting vaccinated!”
The roughly 50,000 appointments were added to the commonwealth’s large-scale vaccination sites at the former Circuit City in Dartmouth, the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Danvers the Eastfield Mall in Springfield, Fenway Park in Boston, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough and the Natick Mall.
Another super vaccination site operates at Worcester State University, and a similar location is set up at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
Retail pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens will administer 20,000-plus doses next week as well, according to Baker’s office.
The long lines in the digital waiting room come a week after the booking portal crashed as around a million Massachusetts residents became eligible to receive their vaccines in the second wave of Phase 2 of the state’s vaccine rollout, which residents and lawmakers alike have criticized as clunky and frustrating.
Baker is set to testify at a hearing later Thursday morning before the new Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management, which seeks to examine the state’s rocky vaccine rollout.
The governor has said Massachusetts receives a limited supply of vaccine doses from the federal government each week.
“Due to high demand and very limited supply, there is only a small number of appointments available,” the booking portal states.
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