Nashville’s COVID-19 vaccine registration website crashed early Friday, as the vaccine became more widely available in the state.
“The Metro Public Health Department said that a system malfunction is preventing people from registering for a COVID-19 vaccine on Friday morning,” according to The Tennessean. The glitch comes on the first day of sign-ups for residents 65+ in Davidson County and was likely due to a high volume of traffic starting at 7 a.m., city spokesperson Brian Todd said.”
“At this time, we are aware of a system malfunction preventing registration for the COVID-19 vaccine. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the health department said on Twitter.
At this time, we are aware of a system malfunction preventing registration for the COVID-19 vaccine.
We apologize for the inconvenience. pic.twitter.com/rRC9yiuRZS
— NashvilleHealth (@NashvilleHealth) February 26, 2021
The site eventually came back online around noon eastern.
The event was reminiscent of a similar failure of Virginia’s COVID-19 vaccination registration website, which crashed immediately upon launching two weeks ago. States are rolling out registration sites as the vaccine for the deadly virus becomes available to the general public.
Tennessee is now in Phase 1b of its vaccine rollout program. That phase includes anyone over the age of 65, along with preschool and K-12 teachers. Also included in this phase is administrative staff for first responders, like 911 dispatchers, who do not have “significant direct public contact,” but work with those who do.
Tennessee has completed Phase 1a1 and Phase 1a2 of its COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Those phases included all medical personnel, staff and residents of long term care facilities, outpatient medical personnel, along with certain groups of younger, immunocompromised Tennesseans.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1.2 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed as of Friday. Most of those doses – about 800,000 – were the first of two required doses.
About six percent of Tennesseans have received both doses of the vaccine, while about 12 percent have received the first dose.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
More of the wonderful government IT work. When I was managing a private company’s IT operation I made a very real mistake in hiring a person who had worked for the state developing software. He was a disaster and did not complete any project to which he was assigned. I was forced to dismiss him after 6 months of trying everything within my power for him to succeed. I never made that mistake again.