Huron Perth’s Medical Officer of Health says Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccination booking portal wasn’t ready quickly enough for our area.
Dr.Miriam Klassen says the Huron Perth Public Health Unit began booking seniors over 80 and health care professionals through their system a few weeks ago prior to the launch of Ontario’s vaccine portal on Monday.
Among the reasons HPPH chose to stick with their own system was that Dr.Klassen said they heard from other health units that some of them experienced systems that became overwhelmed and crashed for booking.
She says HPPH had created a system they felt couldn’t crash and they will stay with it until they are confident the provincial system is ready.
Dr.Klassen says another reason is that the provincial portal doesn’t allow for flexibility.
“If we were done our 80 pluses and we wanted to open it up for 75-80, at this time we couldn’t do it using the provincial system until they announce that that group is eligible.”
HPPH says, as of Monday, they had received 10,274 incoming calls on their booking line since it was launched on March 8th.
