All 10,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that Pinellas County will administer next week have been booked within about an hour after the registration opened on Friday morning.
County officials began accepting reservations through a new online portal and by telephone at 10 am on Friday, about 30 minutes after announcing registration information at a virtual press conference. At 11.05 am all appointments were scheduled, according to a press release from the Department of Health.
The 10,000-dose batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is limited to people aged 65 and over by Governor Ron DeSantis after distribution to healthcare professionals and long-term care facilities. They will be administered to those with appointments at four new county distribution locations on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Since all 10,000 doses are reserved, the county will not schedule further appointments until the next shipment from the state. Dr. Ulyee Choe, director of the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas, said the county does not know the date of the next shipment. There is no waiting list.
With only 10,000 consultations available and about 250,000 elderly people in Pinellas County qualified to receive the vaccine, county administrator Barry Burton expected massive demand in minutes.
“You will see a mad rush to fill the vacancies,” Burton said at the news conference.
Burton said the county did not disclose the locations of the four new distribution locations to prevent people from attending without an appointment. Those who managed to make an appointment on Friday were given times and places to receive the vaccine next week.
Although patients can no longer make appointments, they can set up their account at www.patientportalfl.com.
Burton encouraged residents to get the vaccine from other sources they are distributing, such as hospitals, pharmacies, groups of doctors and community health centers. To date, 36,453 people in Pinellas have been vaccinated from all of these sources, Choe said.
The county launched on Friday the online registration portal and call center operated by CDR Maguire to book all appointments. Hillsborough County launched its online registration and call center with the same Miami-based emergency management consulting firm on Tuesday, which was met with a barrage of complaints from residents who received error messages and busy phone lines that caused confusion and wasted hours trying to get in.
The Hillsborough system successfully logged all 9,000 consultations for all vaccines available on its first day on Tuesday. But coding and software failures have caused users to receive an error message when they should have seen a message saying that all commitments have been met.
The site was also overwhelmed by the sheer volume of users, said CDR executive vice president Tina Vidal-Duart.
Choe said on Friday that county officials worked with the CDR during the week to fix flaws.
“There are always chances of some delays with just the loud volume, but we have no reason to believe that there will be anything important,” said Choe.
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