Good Sign Or Bungled? Vaccine Registration Surge Crashes NH Site

CONCORD, NH — Frustrations mounted all around New Hampshire on Monday as the COVID-19 vaccination registration process for people 50 years of age and older, Phase 2b, crashed the state's Vaccine & Immunization Interface (VINI) website.

Vaccination registrations for Phase 2b, began at 8 a.m., for people between 50 and 65, with appointments starting March 22, after educators and school employees began their vaccination processes earlier this month. About 200,000 Granite Staters fall into Phase 2b category.

Almost immediately, many people in the age sector posted problems with the system. Some reported receiving "VINI is unavailable during scheduled maintenance as preparations are made for Phase 2b registrations" notifications while others shared pictures of a prompt from SalesForce.com stating the company's servers were "temporarily unable to respond to your request."

Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire poli-sci professor who is active on Twitter, posted a number of updates sharing how difficult the experience was.

"20 minutes on New Hampshire vaccine registration site this morning: three tries, three website fails," he wrote around 8:15 a.m.

More than an hour later, he added, "70 minutes on New Hampshire vaccine registration site: success, received email to log onto VINI system. If you fill out the fields on registration page, click 'Next,' nothing happens, stay on page, keep trying, worked for me."

At around 10 a.m., Wendy Thomas, a Democrat and a former state representative from Merrimack who is running for an open seat next month, posted: "I'm still trying to get the system to accept that I am not a robot."

More than a dozen others privately emailed or texted Patch reporting issues with the system.

Gov. Chris Sununu issued a statement saying the "unprecedented volume of web traffic was experienced this morning (was) a good sign that Granite Staters are ready and eager to receive their vaccine" while noting that it did "cause some to experience delays." However, he added, registrations "have been accepted and continue to be processed at an increasing pace, with over 35,000 having scheduled an appointment within the first three hours."

At around 11:30 a.m., AP reported on Twitter there were 38,000 registrations completed.

The New Hampshire Democratic Party, however, quickly jumped on the crashed site and complaints. About seven minutes after the governor issued a statement, the party said the collapse was another failure by the administration to be able to provide an easy process for Granite Staters to get vaccinated. The alert noted that on Friday, some were turned away by Walgreens after showing up for their scheduled vaccination appointments. The party also faulted the governor for being only one of nine state governors to use the federal vaccine appointment system that, they said, caused "turmoil and confusion" for New Hampshire residents early on in the vaccination process.

"This is now the second time that Governor Sununu has promised a seamless vaccine registration process for Granite Staters and failed to deliver," said state Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, a Nashua Democrat. "The governor's inability to create a working, effective registration system is unacceptable. There are still hundreds of thousands of Granite Staters who will need to sign up for the vaccine, and Governor Sununu needs to figure out a way to address these problems immediately."

The Phase 2 vaccination time period is expected to run through May. The state says about 300,000 Granite Staters, nearly one-quarter of the state's residents, could potentially be vaccinated during this time period.

Educators receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine reported adverse reactions to the shot, so much so that both Concord and Hopkinton school districts canceled school on Monday. Patch has since learned teachers and staffers in Bow also had issues, according to alerts — with the district requesting parents to have their middle and high school students be remote on Monday "due to the number of staff out from our mass vaccination."

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