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LA Health Officials Apologize For Vaccine Appointment Tech Issues

By Gina Pollack
Published Jan 20, 2021 3:46 PM
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Vaccinations will be conducted at Dodger Stadium to those with appointments. Chava Sanchez/LAist
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Almost immediately after L.A. County opened vaccination appointments to senior residents on Tuesday, users reported tech issues and frustration with the website.

CalVax — the site that allows users to actually book an appointment — was down for several hours. The county's call center was also quickly overwhelmed.

None of this was particularly shocking. The same thing happened when appointments opened in Orange County last week, after more than 10,000 people scheduled appointments in less than two hours.

Today, county Health Director Barbara Ferrer apologized for the tech issues and thanked Angelenos for their patience:

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We're very sorry for those who experienced problems yesterday with an overwhelmed registration system online and call center. We continue to improve our website and our call center has added additional capacity today.

Ferrer advised residents to continually check the website for open appointment slots, saying that more might open due to cancellations. She also suggested searching for opening at locations "that are further from your home."

L.A. Public Health also Tweeted an explanation, saying that their website is part of a statewide system that crashed Tuesday afternoon, and that appointment slots are "extremely limited" at the moment.

Despite the challenges, the public health department said that thousands were "nevertheless" able to schedule an appointment.

Some LAist readers have reported being able to sign up for an appointment at Dodger Stadium via Carbon Health.

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