Technical issues with Saskatchewan COVID-19 vaccine ordering system resolved

While Saskatchewan was preparing to immunize children aged 5 to 11, technical problems interfered with its COVID-19 vaccine ordering system on Tuesday morning.

Sheila Anderson, director of vaccines at the Saskatchewan Health Service’s emergency operations center, issued the apology during a briefing.

“I know it’s been a really exciting morning for the many parents, carers and guardians who want to bring their loved one in,” Anderson said.

A large amount of traffic on Tuesday morning has slowed down the online booking system. More than 12,000 appointments have been booked for children’s immunizations between 8am and 1pm

Vaccine delivery for children is underway with the SHA plan providing immunizations to 141 communities across the province, at more than 100 schools and through specialist clinics.

“There was about 30 minutes of outage related to high traffic on the site. The system is down, and when it goes down, the public will be met with an error message,” Anderson said.

The technical issues have been resolved and the system is working as expected now, she said.

“We worked with the supplier, [and] Anderson said.

SHA is working with the supplier and closely monitoring the ticketing system.

“We don’t expect that problem to happen again,” Anderson said.

“We’ve definitely gone through a really rigorous testing process and we’ve put all of that into practice before going live today. In fact, this morning the teams got up very early to check the system again.”

The reservation system, she added, worked well throughout the entire vaccination process.

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COVID-19: Provinces across Canada start vaccinating children aged 5-11

Additionally, SHA’s phone line – 1-833-Sask-VAX (727-5829) – also had problems, where the air died, instead of playing music to the waiting caller.

“If there is anyone from the public who may have experienced some sort of problem in just a short time on SASKVAX, we also ask that they call back,” Anderson said.

There are now more than 40,000 appointments, says Anderson, encouraging continued booking.

“Thank you to all the parents out there who eagerly awaited access to the booking system and worked hard to book an appointment, and booked a real appointment today, through the service. online as well as SASKVAX,” said SHA Emergency Executive Derek Miller.

“We intend to make things as easy as possible, as people are familiar with the previous vaccine campaign so people can find where they can get the vaccine closest to them.” .

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