A Utrecht woman on Twitter says that she has to go to Tiel or Culemborg and a man from Veenendaal is requested to go to the vaccination center in Boxmeer. These are just a few examples of people complaining about the distance they have to travel to get a shot. That while they often live close to a vaccination center. Why can’t they just go to their own city?
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Try again later
“The reason is simple,” explains Laetitia Gruwel of the national umbrella organization GGD GHOR. “It has to do with the algorithms of the website. As soon as we announce that certain age groups can schedule a vaccination appointment, it is immediately very busy on the website. Then you get a visitor peak. The system then has to make choices.”
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The website always searches for three locations near you. Those three locations are then temporarily reserved. “If a lot of people make an appointment at the same time, for example just after such an announcement, it is possible that the locations in your area are reserved for a while. There is little that can be done about that.”
The advice of the GGD is therefore to just try again later “How much later? Well, that can be fifteen minutes, but also half a day. The bottom line is that waiting always pays off. During quieter moments on the website, the chance that you can go to a vaccination location closer to you.”
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Calling is (sometimes) faster
If that somehow doesn’t work, you can always call the GGD call center. The employees there can manually assign a vaccination location. “Of course we want to avoid that people suddenly all call at the same time. Then they shut down the call center. That is why people only receive the call center number later, in a letter,” says the spokesperson for GGD GHOR.
But you can call. In fact, sometimes calling is even more convenient. “Certainly if you have difficulty walking or have to take public transport. They can take this into account in the call center. Or suppose you are in Friesland for a few weeks. You can then call to get vaccinated there, instead of in the region where you live. Anyway, of course we hope that people will mainly do it online, which is simply the fastest.”
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