State says 50,000 available vaccine appointments ‘nearly all filled’ after residents report long wait times

BOSTON (WHDH) - The 50,000 COVID-19 vaccine appointments that became available in Massachusetts Thursday morning have been nearly filled after residents who scrambled online in hopes of getting an open slot were met with astronomical wait times.

State officials took to Twitter around 9:30 a.m. to say that the new appointments were nearly all filled “due to a severely limited vaccine supply and a large population of individuals eligible to get a vaccine.”

“If you have not been able to schedule an appointment yet, please try again next week – it may take several attempts over the course of a few weeks to get an open slot,” they continued.

This statement came after several residents reported long wait times on the state’s vaccine appointment scheduling website, including one person who reported a wait time of 80,330 minutes — or nearly 58 days.

Another reported that their wait time was 6,243 minutes, which breaks down to more than four days.

The state had launched a “digital waiting room” to combat high traffic on their VaxFinder website, which had caused the site to crash one week ago.

Gov. Charlie Baker said Wednesday that he expected the state’s website to be “significantly better” after tech teams bolstered its ability to handle heavy traffic by adding the “digital waiting room” among other things.

Baker said they designed the waiting room to keep the site running and operating so residents could get through to secure an appointment with an uninterrupted experience.

All of the new appointments that went live Thursday were for mass vaccination sites at Fenway Park in Boston, Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Springfield, Danvers, Dartmouth, and Natick.

This is a developing story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest updates.

(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)