High demand leads to rocky start for vaccine appointments at the United Center

Registration for 110,000 appointments opened up Thursday for people 65 or older. Drive-thru slots booked up for March in a matter of hours.

Alicia Martinez spent 1 ¹⁄₂ hours on hold Thursday trying to book a COVID-19 vaccine appointment for her partner at the United Center.

Then, at last, a human voice answered. Martinez had just finished giving the woman on the line her partner’s date of birth when she got disconnected.

“I was angry, I was upset. I was everything,” said Martinez, who is 67 and lives in Berwyn.

Martinez wasn’t alone in her frustration — a fact city officials acknowledged Thursday as they began to book appointments for what is by far the largest mass vaccination site in town.

“Some people weren’t able to get through immediately, a sign of how much demand there is for appointments,” said Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health, during a COVID-19 Q&A on Facebook Live.

The online problems that surfaced with the 8:30 a.m. launch appeared to have been resolved by late morning. The Chicago Sun-Times made several attempts to call the phone number provided. Each time, the line was busy.

By 11:30 a.m., about 13,000 appointments had been booked out of the first 110,000 that are now open to Illinois residents 65 or older, Arwady said.

Within a few hours of launching, a “huge rush of people” had booked up all drive-thru appointments for the month of March. Walk-up appointments were still available.

The city has reassigned 200 COVID-19 contract tracers to help bolster the call center taking United Center appointments.

“Especially early on, there were some people getting busy signals,” Arwady said. “The system can handle about 600 calls at any one moment, but keep calling. There are appointments, and we’ll work to get folks in.”

A spokesperson for Zocdoc, the company the city is using to make the appointments, acknowledged the early glitches.

“This morning, some users experienced difficulty advancing past the eligibility verification step in the vaccine appointment scheduling process,” the company said in a statement. “Zocdoc identified and resolved the issue in less than 30 minutes, and users are able to successfully book appointments at both the walk-in and drive-through locations at the United Center.

“We continue to actively monitor the service and our systems to deliver a smooth booking experience for Illinois residents. We apologize to everyone who was affected early this morning, and we look forward to helping more eligible individuals find and book a COVID-19 vaccine appointment.”

At an unrelated news conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged the public to be patient.

“It’s the first opportunity,” Lightfoot said. “We got a lot of enthusiastic people. We’ll get to folks. We just need to be a little bit patient today as both the phone lines and the online platform process tier applications.”

Martinez said it took her about 4 ¹⁄₂ hours in total to book an appointment for her partner, who has a lung condition and heart problems. It was, she said, an ordeal that left her in tears.

“Horrible,” is the word she used to describe it. She managed to get her partner an appointment for 9:30 a.m. March 10.

To register, go to zocdoc.com/vaccine, or call (312) 746-4835. Call centers will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. With the huge demand for appointments, officials urge people to use the online signup if possible.

If any appointments are still available by 4 p.m. Sunday, people 16 or older with chronic health conditions will be eligible to start taking those spots.

The first shots will go into arms outside the United Center site Tuesday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will administer about 6,000 doses per day in tents set up in the parking lot northeast of the stadium. It’ll be a combination of walk-up and drive-thru services.

Contributing: Fran Spielman, Mitch Armentrout