Despite more frustration, Deschutes County vaccine appointments fill in an hour

(Update: St. Charles spokeswoman says despite crush, system didn't crash)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Last week, it took about two hours to fill Deschutes County's appointment slots for seniors to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This week, despite more frustration for many seniors, it took half that time.

With eligibility expanded statewide to all seniors 65 and over (last week, it was 70 and over) -- it took only about an hour to fill the available slots, as there were 800 fewer doses (2,340 total) shipped to Deschutes County for this week than last week.

County officials tweeted shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday that the vaccine appointments for those 65 and over "are now full."

They urged those wishing news for next week's vaccine allocation and distribution to fill out the vaccine interest form at http://vaccine.deschutes.org and also to find more information at http://www.deschutes.org/covid19vaccine.

NewsChannel 21 again heard from frustrated seniors having trouble making an appointment.

But St. Charles spokeswoman Lisa Goodman said, "Our system never crashed. In fact, it performed exceedingly well."

"We made updates to our online scheduling system," she said. "Although we had more than 25,000 people on the site at 9 a.m., it did not crash. The system will only allow a certain number of people in to schedule at one time because of the limited number of appointments. This is by design.

"We understand that people continue to be frustrated," Goodman added. "But ultimately, it is a shortage of vaccines, and not the performance of our system, that is preventing everyone from getting a vaccine when they’d like to."