Vaccine phone line restored following outage

Posted: 6:20 PM CST Monday, Mar. 8, 2021

As Manitoba expanded vaccine eligibility, the province's appointment-booking hotline temporarily crashed Monday afternoon.

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As Manitoba expanded vaccine eligibility, the province's appointment-booking hotline temporarily crashed Monday afternoon.

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This article was published 07/03/2021 (1292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Manitoba expanded vaccine eligibility, the province’s appointment-booking hotline temporarily crashed Monday afternoon.

The cause of the outage hasn’t been determined, according to a provincial spokesperson.

It happened early in the afternoon, shortly after the vaccine task force expanded the vaccine eligibility criteria by five years, allowing people over 80 and First Nations residents over 60 to book appointments. Previously, only those over 85 and 65, respectively, were able to make appointments.

The phone line was restored in a limited capacity after about three hours. Some callers were able to make appointments but others didn’t get through, and the province said it was working on the issue.

So far, more than 60,500 Manitobans have been vaccinated against COVID-19 with a first dose. About half of those got both doses.

Vaccine deliveries to Manitoba are ramping up. For the last two weeks of March, Manitoba is on track to receive more than twice as many Pfizer doses from the federal government than initially planned. Vaccine clinics in Thompson, Brandon, Winnipeg and Selkirk are taking appointments. The Selkirk site was scheduled to open Monday and the opening of a clinic in Morden is expected to follow.

The province plans to have doctors and pharmacists administer fridge-stable vaccines, which, unlike the shots from Pfizer and Moderna, won’t have to be kept extra cold. As of Monday, more than 500 clinics and pharmacies had applied to be part of the vaccine rollout, the province stated in a news release.

On Friday, Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead of Manitoba’s vaccine task force, said Manitobans with serious health conditions such as liver failure, who are between 50-64, will be first in line to be offered the vaccine from their doctor’s office or pharmacy.

The list of serious medical conditions the province developed hasn’t been publicly released.