HARTFORD, Connecticut — On the FOX6161 Facebook page, we asked viewers to share their experiences signing up for a covid-19 vaccine. The post received more than 650 comments and many people say they’re still frustrated.
Governor Lamont said more appointments will become available this week but what happens if you’re still running into technical issues online?
“The problem is similar to driving from New York to New London on 95, you never know where the bottleneck is going to be,” cybersecurity expert and Quinnipiac University Professor Fred Scholl said.
Scholl explained web developers know how to build successful eCommerce websites -which are what vaccine scheduling sites like VAMS are-- but it's difficult to engineer in a short time frame.
“So, you got a bottleneck on the web server itself, you got a bottleneck on the logic that’s matching your request up to the available appointments and you got a bottleneck on the data server where the data is stored and it's really hard to make these sites scale up,” Scholl said.
Although many people are encountering issues--- some people have been successful in scheduling a shot.
“At 6:25p.m. I was getting ready to leave and all the sudden the phone rings and I said what a second what’s this, it said covid and I said what I'm going to answer this one and the lady goes yes I’m from Waterbury Hospital, Ivac want to schedule an appointment for covid, I said you’re kidding me,” Waterbury resident Mike Walewski said.
If you’re looking for some help, you may be able to turn to "Vaccine Angels," a Facebook group ---with more than 7,000 members- dedicated to helping individuals in Connecticut and New York schedule vaccine appointments.
“Anybody can come into our Facebook group and within a matter of seconds, if not minutes, be received by one of our moderators that will explain to them where they can go to secure a vaccination shot or secure excess vaccine,” Vaccine Angels Executive Director Joel Leyden said.