About 50,000 vaccination appointments for next week — mostly at Fenway Park in Boston and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts — will be made available on the state's vaccine scheduling website once it is fully functioning again, Gov. Charlie Baker said during a radio interview just after noon Thursday.
"My hair's on fire about the whole thing. I cannot even begin to tell you how pissed off I am," Baker said on GBH's Boston Public Radio when asked about the failure of the state's website.
About one million people in Massachusetts became newly eligible for the vaccine Thursday morning.
"This is not satisfactory ... it's awful," Baker said. "It's going to get fixed, and I'm going to work very hard to make sure it doesn't happen again."
People visiting vaxfinder.mass.gov after 8 a.m. Thursday were met with a message that "this application crashed." Visitors were advised to try again later.
On the website, the page telling people that the site had crashed featured a confused-looking orange octopus with only four arms. State Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton, the co-chair of the new Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management, saw some symbolism in that.
"The four-armed octopus is an apt metaphor for an incomplete @MassGovernor creature without enough limbs to do its work," she tweeted Thursday morning.
This is what Commonwealth residents are seeing this AM as they log in — hopeful — to make their vaccine appointment. The four-armed octopus is an apt metaphor for an incomplete @MassGovernor creature without enough limbs to do its work. #mapoli pic.twitter.com/jo3pIt6aMR
— Jo Comerford (@Jo_Comerford) February 18, 2021
The website appeared to be back up at about 10 a.m., though it was unclear whether it was fully functional.
Baker said on GBH that his administration had done a lot of "scenario planning" to prepare for the influx of traffic to the website but said it was "clearly not enough."
House Speaker Ronald Mariano was among those who tried to book a vaccination appointment Thursday morning.
"As one of the 1 million residents that became eligible to book my COVID-19 vaccines appointments today, I was disappointed to experience difficulties with the VaxFinder website. We all have the responsibility to get our shots as soon as we can," he said. "I look forward to a productive oversight hearing next week, where we'll address problems that delay the fair and accessible distribution of vaccines."
Around 11:30 a.m., the state's COVID-19 Command Center apologized for the website issues and said that some people had been able to book vaccination appointments Thursday morning through secondary websites.
Baker said that was about 20,000 appointments.
"All appointments for mass vax sites in Springfield, Danvers, Natick and Dartmouth have been booked for the next week. More appointments for these sites will be made available next week," the Command Center spokesperson said. "Additional appointments at other locations will be posted throughout the day today."
