City starts own vaccination reservation system

Writer: Zhang Yu  |  Editor: Holly Wang  |  From: Shenzhen Daily  |  Updated: 2021-04-19

Shenzhen starts its own immunization information system at 8 a.m. today in a bid to provide better vaccination services for citizens. A public trial run of the system was carried out yesterday.

The system will begin accepting COVID-19 vaccine reservations for residents on the Chinese mainland starting from 8 a.m. today and starting from 8 a.m. Wednesday for foreigners as well as Hong Kong and Macao residents, according to a notice issued by the municipal health commission Saturday.

Reservations for common vaccines for children and adults will be available on the system starting from April 25. The city’s vaccination clinics suspended common vaccine services for one week from 12 p.m. Saturday to April 24.

The system will be connected to and upload real-time data to the provincial immunization information system.

The city’s health commission said it will publicly announce the specific appointment methods in a timely manner ahead of the system’s official operation.

The commission suggested that citizens avoid rushing into making a reservation after the system starts operations.

The city’s immunization information system was switched to the provincial system Feb. 1 this year.

The system, however, had been receiving flak from citizens for causing inconveniences, with a netizen mocking that it felt like a 5G user was suddenly given a pager.

Within one day of the system’s launch in Shenzhen, the system’s rating had dropped from 1.8 to 1.6 out of a total score of five.

Though the provincial vaccination reservation system has been operational in other cities for more than a year, it has become a target of criticism due to its many unsolved problems.

Citizens have voiced complaints such as not being able to change the vaccination site, make reservations for certain vaccines, or check other vaccination schedules on the system, while some showed dissatisfaction that previous vaccination records would disappear on the system.