Booster jabs: NHS website hit with problems as 100,000 vaccine appointments booked this morning

The booking site was sending people in circles and wouldn’t let them progress to get a vaccine slot

The NHS website has been hit with technical problems amid a rush of 100,000 people booking their booster jabs on Monday morning.

People struggled to book their third vaccine dose on Sunday night and Monday morning, with many reporting that the website kept “looping back” before they could get a vaccine slot.

Many rushed to grab an appointment on Sunday night following Boris Johnson’s announcement that all adults in the UK would be offered a booster before the end of the month. In a pre-recorded video message, the prime minister urged the nation to “get boosted now” to help stem the “tidal wave” of omicron variant infections.

The PM’s message triggered a rush to book booster jabs on Sunday night, with more than 17,000 people in the online queue shortly after his comments were broadcast. Many people were met with an error message when they tried to load the NHS website.

A statement on the site said: “The NHS website is currently experiencing technical difficulties. We are working to resolve these issues. Thank you for your patience.”

On Monday morning, health secretary Sajid Javid said “we’re once again in a race between the vaccine and the virus” and revealed that ten people have been hospitalised in England with the omicron variant so far. He also said that omicron now makes up 40 per cent of infections in London.

Over 4,000 people were in the online queue to book their third jab at 7:30 on Monday morning. NHS digital said that the website was facing “extremely high demand”. Over 100,000 vaccine appointments had been booked before 9am.

People took to social media to complain about the issues they were facing. Robert Marchland wrote: “Woke at 5:45 so thought I’d give the Booster website another chance. No queue (yay) but still impossible to book a jab. Website randomly loops back at any given moment. Sort this out!”

Jake Smyth posted on Twitter saying: “Go onto the NHS Covid booking website and it constantly sends you around in circles from providing your NHS number/name/DOB then asking for it again without progressing further. Absolute joke considering the gov are hoping more people take up the booster when it’s hard to book!”

Jason Jaye said the website was sending “me in a circle asking for my NHS number, numerous bad gateway pages, refreshing the page etc.” He added: “thrown in the towel after 40 mins of trying. Refreshed again now I’m 9436 in the queue.”

An NHS Digital spokesperson said: “The vaccine booking service is facing extremely high demand and is operating a queuing system to manage numbers. We would advise people currently unable to book to try again later today or tomorrow.”

The booster rollout was officially extended to people in their 30s from Monday.