REGISTERING for the second round of AstraZeneca (AZ) COVID-19 vaccine opt-in programme which opens today for the below 60 year-old age group has been likened to be “more excruciating than public speaking”.
Why not as gadget wizardry, speed typing and not to be forgotten “lady luck” stands in between getting a slot, being put in a waiting list or emerging empty handed.
According to a tweet from the COVID-19 Immunisation Taskforce (CITF), over 300,000 slots for the AZ vaccination had been snapped up – all before the clock even struck one.
“More than 300,000 slots of the second round of the AstraZeneca vaccine booking appointments have been booked. We understand that many are still unable to do so. Please try again shortly,” announced CITF in its official tweet at 12.56pm.
After an agonising 15-minute delay due to presumably IT deficiency, less than an hour is what it took Malaysians to show their hunger – or desperation – to snap up the one million available slots to inoculate themselves against the deadly COVID-19 virus (it does not matter if the AZ vaccine does not enjoy good publicity even from medical experts).
On Twitter, the CITF notified applicants about the delay, explaining that registration would begin at 12.15pm instead of 12 noon.
The first 15 minutes of waiting was such an ordeal with the “register now” button appearing and disappearing from the www.vaksincovid.gov.my website with some applicants later received a notification telling them they have been blocked from the registration site while others received a message to indicate that there were too many requests to access the site.
The site could finally be accessed around 12.20pm and the CITF took to Twitter to apologise for the delay and inconvenience it caused to those who were waiting to register. – May 26, 2021
