Coronavirus: Conflicting text messages see people turn up for rescheduled jabs

Conflicting text messages regarding Monday’s vaccination appointments in Limassol led to confusion with some 70 to 80 members of the public, many of them foreign nationals, turning up at the Spyros Kyprianou vaccination centre for a jab even though their appointment has been rescheduled to Saturday because of the strike by nurses’ union, Pasyno

About 4,500 appointments initially scheduled for Monday at three vaccination centres (Larnaca’s Port B, Limassol’s Spyros Kyprianou B and E and Famagusta General Hospital, Vaccination Centre C) were rescheduled after Pasyno called a 12-hour strike. Of these, 3,000 appointments were at the Limassol centre.

Affected individuals received a text message with a new appointment. However, in yet another apparent IT-related blunder, on Sunday night some received the reminder text messages for their initial appointment, which authorities asked them to ignore.

Deputy head of hospital services Evagoras Tambouris told the Cyprus News Agency that even though the text message notifying affected individuals of their new, rescheduled appointment had also clarified that any reminder message for the initial appointment should be ignored, a number of people had not noticed it.

“We want to appeal to the people to ignore any message they have or will receive and to come on Saturday as arranged,” Tambouris said.

He added that efforts would be made by the ministry of health and the company in charge of sending text messages to send a new SMS.

Many of those who turned up were foreign nationals and Tambouris was asked why the text messages are being sent out only in Greek. He said arrangements must be made for these to be in English as well.

“We will be contacting the ministry and the company now to see whether a new confirmation in Greek and English can be sent to people who have already received a message for a change in their appointment,” he said.