AHS releases vaccine totals from last week

By Medicine Hat News on March 2, 2021.

According to Alberta Health Services, more than 10,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered on Thursday, as well as Friday.

By Friday morning nearly 80,000 health-care workers had received the vaccine, plus more than 55,000 residents in long-term-care or supportive living and more than 51,000 staff working in those seniors facilities, according to an AHS document released Monday.

In spite of the challenges encountered for those more than 75 years old who started booking appointments last week, 12,000 people in this category were immunized in the first two days.

There are two ways for those eligible to book an appointment: a call to HealthLink 811, or the website: https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/topics/Page17295.aspx.

Both systems struggled when they were activated last Wednesday at 8 a.m.

“The fact is, we had 150,000 people try to access that tool all at once, as soon as it went live. We had robustly tested the tool but we did not expect that many people to go to it right away,” the AHS document states.

Since then server capacity has been added. HealthLink 811 now has additional call times and more staff. A “queuing tool” has also been added.

Because HealthLink 811 is also the number to call for medical assistance, some others changes have been made.

Callers can now choose to route calls to book a COVID-19 immunization appointment or to reach a registered nurse for medical concerns.

A holding queue for callers requesting the immunization appointment has also been created. This queue allows 350 individuals to “hold” for a HealthLink team member to book their appointment.

“We continue to anticipate there will be a wait time to get on the online booking tool and through to HealthLink in the coming days. We are asking Albertans to please be patient if they are waiting to book their vaccine appointment.”

The AHS online immunization booking tool and HealthLink are available 24/7. In some parts of the province it is possible to book immunization through certain local pharmacies. This is not yet available in Medicine Hat.

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