When the Min­istry of Health rolled out its vac­ci­na­tion ap­point­ment sys­tem for el­i­gi­ble peo­ple in April, a guide on how to ap­ply was post­ed on its web­site and on all its so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

But it seems that when an in­flux of peo­ple start­ed to fol­low the in­struc­tions it caused a sys­tem over­load, as many peo­ple said af­ter sev­er­al at­tempts the on­ly re­sponse they got was a gener­ic one.

“I know they said they will re­spond in 48 hours great, they did not, days had gone by, and I was won­der­ing will I ever get a re­ply,” Ree Anne Alexan­der said yes­ter­day.

The teacher told Guardian Me­dia that in the mes­sage to the North­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, she in­clud­ed her med­ical con­di­tions and af­ter sev­er­al at­tempts and au­to­mat­ic re­spons­es, the fur­thest she got was a mes­sage that read, “Seen.”

“It led me, a few days af­ter that, to try dif­fer­ent num­bers…it’s been a month now,” she said.

Cler­i­cal Of­fi­cer at the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, Wes­ley Williams, faced the same un­cer­tain­ty, but from the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty. He said while he does not have any non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, he ap­plied be­cause of his job.

“Al­so, be­ing the on­ly mem­ber of my house­hold that is out and about be­ing an es­sen­tial work­er, I would like to pro­tect my­self as well as ex­tend that pro­tec­tion at home,” he said.

On so­cial me­dia, sev­er­al oth­ers said they were still wait­ing a re­sponse.

King-Anu­bis Mar­cano said, “I fed up What­sApp and call, cause I ain’t get­ting replies.”

While So­han Badall and Sham­la Ma­haraj said they sent sev­er­al mes­sages dai­ly but with no luck. While they were able to reach the au­to­mat­ic re­ply stage, some mem­bers of the old­er pop­u­la­tion were not.

Is­mail , 73, had to ask his daugh­ter to book an ap­point­ment via What­sApp for him and his vul­ner­a­ble 71-year-old wife. They still have not re­ceived a re­sponse.

“No, no, I don’t have that ser­vice on my phone, I just have an or­di­nary phone. I be­lieve most of the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion don’t have phone with this kind of ser­vice and they should have made it eas­i­er for the el­der­ly peo­ple and make more ef­fort to get the vac­cine with­out go­ing through What­sApp and these kind of thing,” Mankhan said.

Cit­i­zens may not have to wor­ry about those re­quests again, as the min­istry has im­ple­ment­ed a walk-in sys­tem at health cen­tres. But this will be for cer­tain cat­e­gories at a time. First up are health­care work­ers and peo­ple over 60 or un­der 60 with NCDs.

The num­ber of vac­ci­na­tions per day will be based on the ca­pac­i­ty at the var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties.