B.C.’s Health Minister is promising that things will get better after yesterday’s rocky rollout of the phone system left many people frustrated as they tried to book a COVID-19 vaccine appointment.

Adrian Dix says around 15,000 appointments were made yesterday, about 2,500 of which were in Interior Health.

“I understand and our provider has to understand that we have to do better at responding as well, and we will need to because the demand isn’t going to get less, its going to grow until our general immunization is full on in Phase 3.”

In the Legislature today, Dix blamed Telus for the issues yesterday, especially in Vancouver Coastal Health, where just 369 people were able to book an appointment.

The B.C.-based company was contracted to provide call centres in all health authorities, and Dix says its unacceptable that Telus ‘failed us yesterday’ by not following through on their contractual obligation.

“People should be mad that the service provider didn’t come through here,” he said. “To say I’m disappointed and frustrated would be an understatement.”

“We were repeatedly, repeatedly promised by Telus — in any event, it’s in their contractual obligations — that they would deliver the services necessary yesterday and through this week and through the coming weeks. They did not meet their contractual obligations.”

In a statement Tuesday, Telus president Darren Entwistle apologized for the call centre failures and acknowledged it let people down.

“We know how crucial the vaccine roll-out is for British Columbia, and we are sorry for the frustrations that British Columbians have experienced trying to connect to the call centres,” he said. “The provincial government and health authorities asked us to support them, and we have let them down. We can and will do better, and we will make this right.”

Seniors over 90 and Indigenous people over 65 were eligible to start booking COVID-19 vaccine appointments as of yesterday. According to Dix, there are only about 82,000 people eligible to book an appointment at this time – about 47,000 people over the age of 90 in the province and about 35,000 Indigenous people over 65.

But when 1.7 million calls made in the first three hours after the phone systems opened, Dix urged people to only call to make an appointment either for themselves or on behalf of someone when it is their turn to prevent things like people getting a busy signal or having to be on hold for hours.

“Its our expectation as we go through the coming weeks that we’ll be adding resources week into week and that will happen this week, and that will happen in coming weeks, because we simply have to have to respond quickly to people,” Dix said.

“Every time we go through a new category of person, there’s going to be more people in that category and once we get to the point where the online tool is ready for April 12 when we go really broad in general immunization, that will help of course, but we want to make sure we meet the test in the meantime.”

Interior Health also apologized to people for the issues they faced yesterday, noting everyone who is eligible to book a vaccination appointment will be able to book one.

“We hear your concerns about troubles with phone lines today and we thank you for your patience,” it said, in a statement. “Nobody will miss their chance. If it’s not your turn yet, please wait until you’re eligible to call in. This allows us to vaccinate the most vulnerable first.”

In Question Period today, the interim leader of the BC Liberals, Shirley Bond, says instead of apologizing today, the government should have acted to make sure things were in place long before yesterday.

“We’ve seen these same kinds of challenges, the same kind of botched technology response, with the COVID relief payments,” she said. “It’s déjà vu all over again. People want and need to have confidence in the system. Yesterday this government failed British Columbians miserably.”

Asked about the shortfalls today, Premier John Horgan said he takes ‘full responsibility’ for it noting it is up to government to make sure that it has the right people and infrastructure in place.

“And we are taking steps, as you’ve already heard from Minister Dix and others to correct that today and throughout the rest of the week and indeed throughout the rest of the vaccination program,” Horgan said, noting he was disappointed that Vancouver Coastal Health did not have a contingency plan to prevent the phone lines form being jammed.

Horgan said yesterday was ‘a bad day’ but he is confident the province is on the right track, saying they are working to get through Phase 2 and into Phase 3 of the vaccine roll-out as quickly as possible.

Online Booking System Coming by April 12

B.C. Health Officials say they were hoping to have an online vaccine booking system up and running in all health authorities when people began making vaccine appointments.

In her briefing yesterday, Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry says getting that system ready was a significant task, and they’re currently hoping to have it in place by April 12 when mass vaccine clinics are scheduled to get underway.

“Obviously we wanted it to be ready for weeks ago, but it does take time to get those things together and Fraser Health was the only health authority that had that type of an online booking system that was robust enough at this point,” she said.

“It will get better. The challenge we have is that we don’t have a system that allowed us to this seamlessly that was pre-built and that is unfortunately something we’re seeing across the country. And hopefully, this will be a legacy system that will allow us to do a lot more in the future.”

Dix says a significant number of people in Fraser Health were able to book their appointments online on day one yesterday. According to the Ministry of Health, Fraser Health was able to have a system in place because it adapted an online tool created last summer for people to book COVID tests, while other health authorities had to build their system up from scratch.

Horgan says the province will be working to bolster the booking system as health authorities work together to learn from positive experiences in regions including those served by Fraser Health.

– With files from The Canadian Press