CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Early Tuesday the City of Corpus Christi held a vaccination event at the American Bank Center, but registration for the event didn’t go as smoothly as the city had hoped.
Some people waited in line this morning for hours, only to be told their confirmation wasn’t valid.
The issue was caused by a glitch in the city’s online system that led to overbooking the event. The city was only supposed to register 250 people, but the software system glitch allowed more people to register.
One Corpus Christi resident says he received a QR code but was told by officials that he didn’t have the correct confirmation.
“I spent two..two and half hours of my morning…and sleep…to try to get vaccinated for something that was just a waste of my time,” Marvin Faires said.
Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni said that the software is the same one that is used for the phone bank where people make reservations. It is also the same one that was used for the Robstown vaccination event in which the city’s website crashed due to insufficient bandwidth because so many people were registering.
He also said the software company, Luminare, will not be reimbursing the city and that they have a good partnership with the company. He asserted that some vaccination events are pilots and that the city will have a meeting Wednesday to see what they need to improve.
The city paid Luminare $49,000 using funds from the CARES Act that the federal government provided the city.
When asked about why the city took down a Twitter statement about the mishap, Zanoni says perhaps both the city and county didn’t get to review the statement before posting it.
So what exactly will happen with the people that registered and were denied today?
“The good news though is that all those individuals have been told that they will be first in line for our next vaccine event and that’s going to be soon…within the next week or so,” Zanoni said.
He says the 925 people that were part of the glitch will receive their vaccination Thursday at the Richard Borchard Fairgrounds. The other 1000 that were part of the glitch will receive vaccines sometime next week at the fairgrounds.
The city manager also said that since the city already has their information, they will tell them when and where to go to get vaccinated.
