Took 7 hours to fill 3,000 UMC ‘super senior’ vaccine spots
EL PASO, Texas -- University Medical Center of El Paso finally closed registration for 3,000 vaccination appointments for "super seniors" - those 70 years of age and older - at 4 p.m. Thursday.
A UMC spokesman indicated it took seven hours to fill those spots after the hospital had opened its registration website and phone line at 9 a.m. but had hundreds of appointments remain available throughout the day.
"Super seniors" were able to register online at UMCelpaso.org or by calling 915-200-2700. Both the telephone number and website have since closed after all the available appointments were finally taken.
Initially, a total of 2,000 appointments had planned to be offered for "super seniors" online and by phone, but officials indicated they raised that number to 3,000 in an effort to allow as many as possible to sign up.
This is the second time recently that a UMC special registration for "super seniors" has taken significant time to fill all the spots. It's contrasted with a broader vaccine registration event earlier this week which saw UMC's website become overloaded and crash.
"On Tuesday, we had 87,000 people all at once vying for 4,000 appointments. At no time today did we have more than 2,000 hitting the registration page," UMC spokesman Ryan Mielke told ABC-7 on Thursday afternoon.
