Shortly after Florida Department of Health officials relaunched the Broward County COVID-19 vaccination portal, the website appeared to be offline again after a hiatus earlier in the week.
The portal aims to enable residents aged 65 and over to make an appointment to receive the vaccine for free. Before going offline on Sunday, it had offered both regular and drive-thru vaccination appointments.
The website went live for the first time on Wednesday and all available slots were quickly booked up through February before the portal started experiencing intermittent outages.
Multiple residents report that the Broward County vaccination portal, https://browardcovidvaccine.com/, displayed this error.
“We are sorry that the registration system did not work as we intended,” said Dr. Paula Thaqi, director of the Florida Department of Health in Broward, after the initial outage on Wednesday. “We recognize that our Senior Community likes the vaccine.”
Officials announced that the portal was back up and running on Sunday, thanking residents for their patients in a press release, but moments later, NBC 6 received multiple reports from residents who were unable to access the site.
Appointments cannot be made by phone at the moment. The department had urged eligible seniors to visit the portal often, saying they would increase the number of senior vaccination sites in the coming weeks.
“Please know that this is just the beginning of the vaccination options for COVID-19,” Thaqi noted on Wednesday. “As the local supply of vaccines grows, DOH-Broward, along with our partners, are ready to vaccinate individuals aged 65 and older as well as additional priority groups as soon as they are identified.”