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The 10,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that Pinellas County will administer next week have been booked about an hour after registration opened on Friday morning.
County officials began accepting reservations through a new online portal and over the phone at 10 a.m. Friday, about 30 minutes after announcing registration information in a virtual press conference. By 11:05 a.m., all appointments had been made, according to a press release from the Department of Health.
The 10,000-dose bundle of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is restricted to persons 65 years of age and older by Governor Ron DeSantis after distribution to health workers and long-term care facilities. They will be administered to those with appointments at four new county distribution sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Because the 10,000 doses are reserved, the county will no longer schedule appointments until the state’s next shipment. Dr Ulyee Choe, director of the Florida health department in Pinellas, said the county did not know the date of the next shipment. There is no waiting list.
With just 10,000 appointments available and about 250,000 Pinellas County seniors eligible to receive the vaccine, county administrator Barry Burton expected a massive demand within minutes.
“You’re going to see a mad race to fill the slots,” Burton said at the press conference.
Burton said the county is not disclosing the locations of the four new distribution sites to prevent people from showing up without an appointment. Those who successfully made an appointment on Friday have had times and places to receive the vaccine next week.
Although patients can no longer book an appointment, they can create their account at www.patientportalfl.com.
Burton encouraged residents to seek the vaccine from other sources that distribute it, such as hospitals, pharmacies, physician groups and community health centers. To date, 36,453 people in Pinellas have been vaccinated from all of these sources, Choe said.
The county on Friday launched the online registration portal and call center operated by CDR Maguire to make all appointments. Hillsborough County on Tuesday launched its online registration and call center with the same Miami-based emergency management consulting firm, which has been greeted with a flood of complaints from residents who have received error messages and busy phone lines confusing and wasting hours trying to get in. .
The Hillsborough system successfully recorded the 9,000 appointments for all vaccines available on the first day of Tuesday. But coding and software issues caused users to receive an error message when they should have seen a message that all appointments were full.
The website was also overwhelmed by the large number of users, said CDR executive vice president Tina Vidal-Duart.
Choe said on Friday that county officials had worked with CDR throughout the week to fix the issues.
“There are always chances for delays just with the high volume, but we have no reason to believe that there will be anything major,” Choe said.
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