Health News Florida – We asked for your experiences in scheduling a vaccine appointment.
A combination of high demand, limited supply and crashed websites have made for a frustrating week. Here is a sampling of your responses.
Disaster. Impossible. Hopeless. Frustrated. Disgrace.
These are just some of the words WUSF News and Health News Florida heard from Floridians asked to share their experiences with the state’s COVID vaccine distribution efforts.
A combination of high demand and limited supply have created a difficult situation for residents age 65 and over and eligible to receive a dose of the vaccine.
Add onto that a reservation system for seniors that’s dependent on online signups.
About 4 million people in the state fit into this priority group for the vaccine.
The current flow of available doses into Florida right now means it could take up to four months to inoculate every one of these seniors, said Jared Moskowitz, Florida’s Emergency Management Director.
And these experiences in Florida don’t seem to be letting up soon. The state has asked the federal government for more vaccines, but Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday there is no timeline on delivery.
Here’s a sampling of the frustrations some Floridians say they’ve experienced this week (some of the letters have been edited for length and clarity).
There were website issues:
I am a 68-year-old female with multiple serious pre-existing disease processes and I was most anxiously wanted to be vaccinated against this terrible virus.
Starting at precisely 9 a.m. on Monday, 1/5, I did as instructed and tried to sign in to the Hillsborough County Vaccine Scheduling website and was unable to sign in to it. Repeated tries throughout the entire day proved futile.
The website had crashed on its debut. After Monday, the county shut down the website. When using the website failed, I attempted to use the phone number they had given …
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