2,000 Bucks County Residents Turned Away From Scheduled COVID Vaccine Appointments Due To Glitches
BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. (CBS) --Two thousand Bucks County residents who thought they would get the first dose of the COVID vaccine Tuesday learned they would have to wait. As you can imagine, it created a lot of anger and frustration.
"Obviously, we wanted everything to go perfectly. We fell short of that," Bucks County Commissioner Robert Harvie said.
Following day one of COVID vaccinations in Bucks County, questions remain over major glitches that caused double bookings and cancellations of confirmed appointments scheduled.
"We did have quite a few people who were registered and thought they had done things right and had appointments that we had to turn away," Harvie said.
Muriel Hastings says she had one of those Tuesday appointments.
"I was told if I didn't go I would be arrested," she said.
The group 1A Doylestown resident says she registered on the county's site, received multiple appointment reminders, and thought she was good to go until Monday night when an email came in from the Bucks County Emergency Management Agency.
"It looked kind of shady and you know we're always warned don't click on links you don't know," Hastings said.
Hastings didn't click on it and showed up as scheduled, but it turns out it was legit. She was one of roughly 2,000 people who received that email from the agency overseeing the county's rollout telling her the shot had to be rescheduled.
"The problem really is two things -- it was a real problem with people sharing the appointment links. There was a separate issue with the software that was scheduling people one of our allowed sort of double-booking," Harvie said.
Still while many were turned away, some got the vaccine tonight.
"The shot itself was easy, it was getting the appointment," one woman said.
"This is the first day we are doing it, it is the most complex vaccination program in human history and it is certainly something we are going to get better at," Harvie said.
While Hastings is still waiting to learn when her shot will be rescheduled, I'm told more than 600 people got theirs today at the three community college sites. Everyone is now hoping the learning curve goes quickly from here.
CBS3's Alicia Roberts reports.
