Vaccine registration challenges
LAST week on Sunday, some health workers experienced challenges with the vaccine registration system.
They then decided to go directly, without registering, to the Steve Biko Academic Hospital to get their jab, which reportedly led to chaos that involved long queues and resulted in some who had successfully registered on the system being unable to get their jab and being turned away.
South Africa is not alone in experiencing teething problems with vaccination systems.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined the need for a system that could handle a mass vaccination campaign once shots were approved. It wanted to streamline sign-ups, scheduling, inventory tracking, and immunisation reporting.
TINGLONG DAI
If you’ve tried to get a COVID-19 vaccine appointment, you know how frustrating the process can be. People are spending hours obsessively refreshing websites, hoping an appointment will open up somewhere.
They scan Facebook groups for tips and insider information. One writer compared it to Soviet-style queues for cabbage.
The competition for slots will only worsen when the COVID-19 vaccination priority list opens to the broader public.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Much of this misery comes from poorly designed vaccine sign-up websites, but the problem is more fundamental.
As an expert in health care operations and vaccine supply chains, I have closely followed the difficulties in connecting COVID-19 vaccine doses with people.
RMIT University The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is the second COVID shot to be approved in Australia, and it s likely Australians will start receiving it next month. By mid-January, only about a quarter of the COVID-19 vaccines distributed for U.S. nursing homes through the federal program had reached people’s arms. Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images Januari 14, 2021