Thousands Waited in Line... "I'm Not Eligible for Vaccination?"

<Trying to Book Janssen Vaccine Appointment>

Reservations for Reservists and Civil Defense Over 30 Start at Midnight
Started Earlier Than Scheduled

Yeongdeungpo Civil Defense Members' List Error Causes Vaccine Chaos at Night

A civil defense member in their 30s attempted to make a reservation for the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, but the COVID-19 vaccination pre-registration system displayed a notification stating "You are not eligible."

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] Reservations for the Janssen (a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary) COVID-19 vaccine for reservists and civil defense personnel began at midnight on the 1st. With the introduction of a ‘first-come, first-served’ reservation system for the first time, there was a long wait time to access the system, and errors occurred in the lists of some civil defense personnel, causing a commotion from early morning.

On this day, reservists and civil defense personnel aged 30 and above, as well as military-related workers, applied for Janssen vaccine reservations one after another through the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency’s COVID-19 vaccination pre-reservation system. Since the allocated vaccines were only about 1 million doses, while the total eligible population reached 3,715,000?comprising 538,000 reservists, 3,040,000 civil defense personnel, and 137,000 military-related workers?the reservation was conducted on a first-come, first-served basis without selecting priority recipients.

The reservation, which started slightly earlier than scheduled at 11:56 PM on the previous day, saw the number of people waiting to access the system reach 60,000 around 12:11 AM on the 1st, with wait times displayed as over 40 minutes. However, although access delays occurred, there was no ‘server down’ due to system overload making access impossible. The access queue mostly cleared after around 12:30 AM, and system access began to run smoothly about an hour after the reservation started.

Civil Defense Training Scene

After access normalized, another problem emerged. Some civil defense personnel in certain areas received messages stating ‘You are not eligible.’ Subsequently, posts appeared on various online communities reporting that ‘reservations are not working for civil defense personnel in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul,’ bringing this issue to light.

Some personnel formed a KakaoTalk open chat room called the ‘Yeongdeungpo Civil Defense Emergency Response Committee’ and collectively protested by calling the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency call center and Yeongdeungpo District Office. Lee (33), a civil defense member from Yeongdeungpo-gu, complained, “For about 20 minutes, I couldn’t access the system at all, and now no matter how many times I try, I only get messages saying I am not eligible.”

The issue was resolved around 8:30 AM. Since the health authorities set the vaccination start time at midnight considering the characteristics of the recipients, many of whom are active internet users, to stabilize the vaccination management system through distributed reservations, it ironically took considerable time to identify and respond to the problem.

The cause of the incident was confirmed to be an error during the list preparation process at the Yeongdeungpo District Office. A Seoul civil defense official explained, “Out of 35,082 civil defense personnel in Yeongdeungpo-gu, 403 experienced this issue. During data conversion for system input at Yeongdeungpo-gu, 401 people’s resident registration numbers, which should have 13 digits, were converted to 12 digits, and for 2 people, the conversion was not done at all.”

A civil defense official from Yeongdeungpo District Office stated, “There are cases where reservations were made normally among other civil defense personnel, and it was confirmed that the problem occurred only in some cases. We corrected the data, reported it to Seoul City, and the reservations have now been normalized.”