Austin Public Health's Vaccine Signup Experiences Delays Monday

After experiencing technical delays Monday night, Austin Public Health will give residents an extra day to book a coronavirus vaccine appointment on Tuesday, officials said.

The city-county public health agency said Monday evening its scheduling system ran into technical issues resulting in massive delays during its weekly Monday release.

Austin Public Health announced earlier this month the weekly Monday release will include first dose appointments for the entire week of planned vaccine operations.

After working with its vendor for multiple hours, Austin Public Health was forced to end its scheduling.

"We are disappointed and share your frustration in the technical difficulties tonight and the time it wasted," the agency said. "To make-up for the unscheduled appointments, we likely need to add an additional day of appointment scheduling."

Officials said residents are encouraged to check back at the city website by 5 p.m. Tuesday.

After the announcement, many people took to social media to voice their frustration at the agency's system.

Some said they waited several hours to book a vaccine appointment and complained being unable to book an appointment was a waste of their time.

"Literally the biggest waste of my time and thousands of other people who waited nearly 6 hours. And we have to 'get in line' again? It's bs," said Twitter user @kselarome.

Another user said his wife broke down in tears after waiting six hours to book an appointment before the system failed.

"Is there really nothing you can do for people who were well within the queue to be able to schedule an appointment and waited six hours for nothing?," Twitter user @hateitherehaha said. "My wife is literally crying in the dark right now after wasting the evening after another tech issue ruined our previous attempt."

Austin Public Health announced Tuesday afternoon only 2,300 appointments were scheduled Monday afternoon after it noticed issues of people being unable to move past the appointment confirmation page and a "slower than usual scheduling process."

During the incident, the agency said its team worked with the vendor on several solutions such as letting fewer people out of the waiting room and into the scheduling system, creating a new site in the system for people to schedule, and pausing the waiting room to help those who were already in the scheduler complete the appointment confirmation process.

Late Tuesday, the agency said the issue that led to Monday's technical difficulties came from a new program code. Since the program is maintained by a third-party system, Austin Public Health said it was unable to see who was in the queue when the system went awry.

"We understand this is frustrating and we are working to proactively schedule those who had made it past the waiting room and were unable to confirm their appointments due to technical issues," the agency said. "We are also continuing to schedule through the Health Equity Line."