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The opportunity to book slots for vaccination via digital register was made available to those over 40 years of age late Wednesday (May 12) night. Vaccination seekers had crashed the digital registration system by Thursday morning and the resulting jam forced to wait everybody, including those booking consultations with specialists, receive Covid-19 test results or view their vaccination certificates.
The Health and Welfare Information Systems Center (TEHIK) reported Thursday morning that people have access to the site but that there is a waiting line. “yes, we have created a digital queue in the patient portal to provide people with the information about their place in the waiting line for vaccination booking and about how long it would take,” said Karilin Engelbrecht, PR head of TEHIK. “This is a dynamic solution and the length of the queue changes dependent on how many people join it or leave it,” Engelbrecht said.
The longest time spent in the waiting line in Thursday was an hour and a half but it had fallen to only half an hour by three o’clock in the afternoon. “Services like generating a Covid-19 certificate or booking time for consulting with specialists are still available but we ask the people to expect spending some more time,” Engelbrecht said.
It is still possible to book time for meeting with a specialist by calling on the hospital registration office. “As for certificates I can only recommend not to leave obtaining documents necessary for travel for the last moment,” Engelbrecht said.
The waiting line service permits access to 5,000 individuals, but TEHIK is also monitoring the state of the hospitals’ information systems and reacts when necessary.
Marek Seer, the head of the vaccination working group, told Postimees that regarding the vaccination slots booking they had anticipated high interest in the first days and the forming of queues. “As far as I know, the limit of individuals who can log into the digital registration system at the same time has been imposed so that the hospitals’ data systems would not crash and those who have logged in could complete their booking,” he said.
According to Engelbrecht, annoyed people have approached TEHIK. “It is necessary to understand that when the hospitals run out of vacant slots, the TEHIK user help cannot do anything. There are some 20,000 slots for first vaccination in the first week and more slots are currently added;” she said.
Can one register on Saturday? “If you cannot get a slot immediately, we recommend trying again in a few days of in a week,” Engelbrecht said.
Can we say that the system has crashed? “It hasn’t. We are prepared for having thousands of people making reservations at once, but once we have reached the capacity limit, we shall curb temporarily the number of users logged in simultaneously and will hope for their understanding,” Engelbrecht explained and added that since inquiries for free slots are relayed to the data systems of Estonia’s hospitals, the capacity of these systems must be considered as well.
“Since approximately 500,000 of the adult population have not yet been vaccinated, the interest is certainly higher than the availability of vaccination slots we can offer. But the vaccine shipments will become larger every passing week and all those interested should receive their first vaccine shots in May and June,” Engelbrecht said.
Minister of Health and Labor Tanel Kiik, who spoke on Thursday’s press conference, said that the people should stay calm. “The ratio of demand and supply is becoming more balanced every passing week,” he said. Prime Minister Kaja Kallas added that in case of vaccination slots, any move would cause dissatisfaction. “It is all because we do not have enough vaccines,” Kallas said.
Those between 16 and 39 years of age will be able to book slots for vaccination starting from Monday (May 17). Those over 40 can also book slots for next week at the earliest.
“In my opinion this is a really bad show, considering that the people at the Ministry of Social affairs knew in advance that it would happen,” said Jevgeni Ossinovski, member of the parliamentary Social Democratic faction. He could not understand why the ministry did nothing to prevent the jam. He predicted a similar chaos for Monday. “Unless they come to some smart idea in between,” he added.
Ossinovski proposed a small improvement which could help in reducing the queues and not making people wait for 30 minutes to an hour at a computer. “How about making booking slots for every day available according to the last figure of the personal identification code? For example, number zero for Mondays, number six for Tuesdays. This would be a small application which could be made in a day,” he proposed.
The state should have been able to think in advance, said Helle-Moonika Helme, vice-chairman of the Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) faction. She reminded that the current confusion with the digital registration began from the government’s desire to vaccinate everybody and decision that people should list themselves. “The new government hired Signe Riisalo, who took over some obligations of Tanel Kiik so that he could have more time to deal with public health and Covid. Yet Kiik did not manage and they had to hire a vaccination coordinator who has a working group to help him,” Helme said. “I would like to know how they made all these expenses and still failed to foresee the likely emerging problems,” Helme added.
She said that it is necessary to keep in mind that technological miracles do not arrive miraculously and that it takes time to develop a working digital registration system. “Tanel Kiik should have thought earlier that avoiding jams requires time and much work. It is a pure IT information handling issue and I predict that if there are problems now, they will only accumulate rather than get solved”.