Moments after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the city would begin providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents ages 65 and older on Monday, many older adults were already running into tech troubles as they attempted to navigate the city’s online vaccination portal.

By Monday afternoon, locals began sharing their frustrations across social media networks and hyperlocal listservs, detailing the technical glitches and long hold times preventing them from scheduling appointments. Just hours after the mayor’s announcement, appointments for all of the 6,700 doses allotted for older D.C. residents this week had been booked. D.C.’s vaccination page now instructs individuals to sign-up for email or text alerts to be notified as appointments become available next week.

During her press conference, Bowser told all Washingtonians 65 and up to make an appointment at vaccinate.dc.gov, or call the the city’s coronavirus call center.

“Very simple,” Bowser said Monday. “It should take only five minutes on the phone.”

Yet dozens of residents, including The Kojo Show‘s own Kojo Nnamdi, found the process to be quite the opposite, marking a road bump in the city’s vaccine rollout.

Trying to register to get DC vaccination. Filled out form. I am eligible. 12 suggested locations for appts. 11 said “no records on display.” 12th: “not enough vaccinations available.” SMH.

— Kojo Nnamdi (@Nnamdikid) January 11, 2021

D.C. Health began the first phase of the vaccination process in mid-December, vaccinating healthcare workers and other medical first responders. In late December and early January, residents in long-term care facilities and nursing homes began receiving vaccinations through a federally operated partnership with CVS and Walgreens pharmacies. The second phase of the city’s plan, which kicked off Monday, includes individuals 65 and older, and residents and staff in congregate settings like group homes and homeless shelters. Anyone waiting to see when they will be eligible for a vaccine can sign-up for alerts through D.C.’s vaccination website. 

Pat Jayne, a 70-year-old Mount Pleasant resident, says she had registered through D.C. Health about two weeks ago to receive an alert when her age group would be eligible for a vaccine. Jayne says she never received such an alert when the vaccination appointments opened on Monday, and instead was notified of the availability by Mount Pleasant Village, one of 13 volunteer groups that support aging residents throughout the city’s neighborhoods.

After inputting all of her information into the appointment portal Monday afternoon (which she says took awhile), Jayne says every location she clicked on either showed “no appointments” or “no vaccines.”

“I went through every single place on the list and there were no appointments,” Jayne says.

Denise Snyder, the executive director of the Foggy Bottom West End Village, says the organization received around 30 calls on Monday from residents like Jayne, struggling to snag appointments and frustrated by the tedious online portal.

One major issue was the portal’s system for checking for available appointments. Residents had to select each site individually to check for appointment times; once one location proved unsuccessful, residents had to restart the entire process, re-registering their information, to try another. And for those who attempted to schedule their appointments over the phone, Snyder says the wait times lasted upwards of two hours.

“People were getting messages when they tried to call in that they were the 225th person in line, which again, was a major source of frustration,” Snyder says. “Some people stuck it out and were able to get an appointment, but a lot of people gave up before they could get through.”

She adds that a timing miscommunication may have also contributed to the chaotic rollout. According to Snyder, the senior villages across the city were informed that Bowser would be holding a press conference at 11 a.m. on Monday, and the portal would be open by 12 p.m. Instead, the mayor’s presser began at 10 a.m., and some people were scheduling appointments through the portal as early as 8:30 a.m, according to Snyder. By mid-morning, she says the online system had broken down several times.

The director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations and Services commented on one Nextdoor thread about the issues with the portal, stating “Thank you all for your patience during this initial roll out. Your experiences and suggestions have been shared.” In a statement to DCist, a spokesperson for D.C. Health said that the department will “continue to make improvements to the site to make it easier to navigate” based on feedback from users. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said any further updates on the registration process may be expected early next week.

“We understand that everyone in the D.C. government is trying to do their best to work with a very difficult and complicated system,” Snyder says of the rollout. “Having said that, you know, it is most definitely our hope that they will correct a lot of these problems by next Monday. And when the new appointment dates are made available, that folks trying to get in to get appointments next week won’t have the same level of frustration that older adults had yesterday.”

Snyder says that the 13 villages across D.C. have been communicating frequently via email with their older residents, trying to keep them abreast of the vaccination process, which can be complicated for non-tech savvy residents. The villages are offering transportation to individuals who managed to secure an appointment on Monday, and facilitating registration over the phone for those without access to a computer.

“I hate to see our older adults frustrated,” Snyder says. “We want to reassure everyone that everyone will get a vaccination. It just may take a little longer than we wish it would.”

D.C. is not the only city where vaccine rollouts have hit technical snags, impeding accessibility for elderly residents or those without technology. In New York, signing up for a vaccination appointment required a multi-step verification and 51-question form, leaving the elderly and their families frustrated. A similar scene unfolded last month in Florida, where website failures and a decentralized distribution system muddied the rollout of vaccinations to the state’s older residents.

According to D.C. Health data, the city has administered 26,672 doses of the COVID-19, mainly to healthcare workers. In order to avoid any waste, the city has instructed providers to give out soon-to-expire to doses to any individuals available, leading some non-healthcare-worker residents to receive unused doses at local grocery store pharmacies when appointments are no-shows. In the next phase of the rollout, which D.C. Health expects to begin on Jan. 25, essential workers like grocery store employees and teachers will be eligible for vaccinations.