CHELSEA, MASS. (WHDH) - Some Massachusetts lawmakers voiced their frustrations surrounding the vaccine rollout on Thursday.
The crash of the state vaccination website drew criticism from the state’s Democratic delegation to Washington with Congresswoman and Assistant House Speaker Katherine Clarke tweeting:
“It’s no surprise #MA residents are eager to be vaccinated. What we need is a system that matches the volume. With a waitlist, residents wouldn’t have to flood a website every minute or hour, or be scrambling from link to link. We need to do better.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren visited a vaccination site at the Chelsea Community Center that had just scored its own supply of vaccines directly from the federal government.
Warren said Gov. Charlie Baker should have already set up a centralized state system for all vaccine requests.
“When the response was, ‘They had overwhelming demand,’ you really wanted to say, ‘Well, yeah,” she said.
Warren has written to the governor but said she has not heard back yet.
“This was the first day a million people were eligible for the vaccine in the state. Of course, there was demand. I just don’t understand how you couldn’t have a system built for that,” she said.
Baker said he does not want to set up appointments for vaccinations until the federal government guarantees he’ll have the vaccines.
He is asking the delegation to push the Biden administration for more information about how many doses are coming and when.
“What I would really like to have the delegation do is push the…push the administration to give states a bigger window to book appointments cause that would many cases, in many cases would solve for a lot of people the complexity about getting an appointment,” he explained.
Sen. Ed Markey said all levels of government need to step up to the plate.
“It’s time for the American people to ask their government what they can do for them and their families,” Markey said.
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