ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Technical issues plagued the online registration system used by Pinellas County for COVID-19 vaccine appointments.
The county advertised the site and availability of 8,000 appointments but not long after 10 a.m. Saturday, people began complaining of error messages.
High demand was anticipated, the county said, but officials say a company providing the registration website suffered an outage that prevented people from getting appointments. The county said the online appointment system was set to go back online at 1:45 p.m.
As of 2:25 p.m., all appointment slots had been booked.
"Pre-registration portal update: The vendor has reported a system issue affecting the portal, due to a national core outage," the county earlier wrote on Facebook. "The company is working on resolving these issues promptly. We will share updates on this page as soon as the vendor advises the issue is resolved."
During the outage, people were told to call 844-770-8548 and try getting an appointment on phone, though that number reportedly had long wait times.
"We need to know whether or not there are any appointments available. Should we keep trying or not??" Karen Pickell replied to the county's Facebook post.
10 Tampa Bay asked the county about the ongoing issue but was directed to its updates on social media.
On Monday, the county Department of Health put out a statement on Twitter citing a "national server issue" for the system outages.
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