"It's Torture": North Shore Residents Sound Off On Vaccine Fiasco

DANVERS, MA — Anger and frustration over the choppy state coronavirus vaccination rollout hit a new peak of exasperation on Thursday when the state's website crashed the day more than 1 million residents were newly eligible for the shot.

North Shore residents expressed irritation not only about the crash — one day after Gov. Charlie Baker assured it would be able to withstand the crush of clicks — but also with the system that forced some to go through a long application process only to find out at the end there were no longer shots available at the Danvers mass vaccination site.

"The experience has been very bad — and extremely frustrating," Salem resident Chris Orsmby told Patch. "They should let you know somehow register that you want a vaccine so that you don't have to enter all of your information every time you go through any of these web pages. I've had to answer the same questions many, many times, every time, just to be told there are no appointments available.

"It's torture."

Ormsby advised a "save my answers" option should be built into the state website so information does not have to be retyped over and over again.

Pamela Vaccaro had a similar experience. She said she was able to get through on the site and got to a page where it said there were appointments available for the Danvers site next week.

She said she put in for the appointment she wanted, selected her time slot and was told she had to answer the questions.

It wasn't until she followed the directions and answered all the questions — some of which she said were optional ones about demographics — when she was told the appointment she was registering for was no longer available.

"At that point you could not backtrack or continue to another screen in order to pick from any other available time slot or date," she lamented to Patch. "You are just stopped in your tracks with no options, so all of the information that you entered believing it to be secure and credibly run was just entered somewhere with no appointment confirmation number given before you hit a brick wall."

Vaccaro said she received four emails from Curative — which runs the Danvers site — with links to make appointments, but each time she followed them she got a message that there were none left.

"Everything just vanished," she said.

The state sent out a message on social media late in the morning that — somehow despite the site barely being online — all the spots for Danvers were already gone. There were about 10,000 spots held back at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium for when the website was consistently working, but Vaccaro said she didn't have any luck there either.

"Everyone was obviously trying to access a site that was not load-tested and performance-tested properly and Baker now has egg on his face over this too," she determined. "And why did they stop our health care and hospital sites from being part of this? I was waiting patiently for the Mass. General Patient Portal to notify me when I was eligible, and just when I was eligible these trusted hospitals and health organizations were shut off.

"We have the best hospitals in the country and they are trusted. Why are we now going through this mess?"

Baker said in a radio interview on Thursday he was "pissed off" that a site he vouched for a day early crashed under the crunch of the newly eligible residents — which include all those 65 or older and those with two or more underlying health conditions.

He said on Wednesday that municipal health clinics and hospital-based clinic were no longer going to be supplied significant vaccine doses because the larger vaccination sites — such as the DoubleTree in Danvers — were more efficient.

"The big message we got from the pubic was: 'Vaccinate! Vaccinate!'" Baker said at his Wednesday news conference. "There's no question the fastest way to do this is with high-volume sites."

"I tried all day at several different locations and could never even get an opportunity to select an appointment time," Gary Pearce, a Danvers resident, told Patch. "Most of the time I got that message that the website had crashed. The state didn't learn anything from the first phase about how to have a website work."

Baker did preach patience on Wednesday, saying that it would take up to a month before all those newly eligible in Phase Two will be able to schedule their first shot.

But after one day on Thursday, patience on the North Shore was running thin.

"Have been trying from 8 a.m. until now, 3:25 p.m., and have been unsuccessful," Yvonne Santiago told Patch.

"I tried starting at 7:57 a.m. and it came up crashed," Chuck Geier told Patch. "I knew that we going to happen (on Wednesday). It was a no-brainer. Then tried every 20 to 30 minutes and nothing.

"Thank you, Governor Baker."

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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