NHS vaccine website crashes as Boris warns of Omicron ’emergency’

The official website to order Covid vaccines crashed this evening a few minutes after the prime minister announced that we are facing a ‘tide wave’ of Omicron infections and urge people to book their booster tickets.

He said rollout would be accelerated, with the goal that every eligible adult would be given a booster dose by the end of December – a month earlier than previously planned.

As thousands of people flocked to try and book, the NHS website failed to meet the growing demand and told people ‘currently having technical difficulties.

‘We are working to address these issues. Thank you for your patience.’

It comes after the Prime Minister warned that the new variant could cause ‘a lot of deaths’ and that Britain ‘must urgently strengthen our vaccine defense wall’.

That means everyone over 18 who got a second shot more than three months ago will be able to schedule a booster shot online from Wednesday, or visit multiple automated clinics from tomorrow.

The NHS website usually tells people they are queuing, and gives the count of how many people are ahead of them and how long they have to wait.

It resumed late in the evening, though still showing high demand.

A woman this evening shared a screenshot showing that she had been told that over 20,000 people were ahead of her, only to be ‘ejected out of the house’ by the website as she stood in front of the queue. .

Others said how they were just shown the error message.

Some see this as a reassuring sign that people are responding to the call to be stabbed, but others see it as a failure to prepare.

In a televised address this evening, Mr Johnson said scientists have found that a full two-dose vaccination is ‘simply not enough’ to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus mutation and otherwise speed up the ramp-up campaign, the NHS could be overwhelmed.

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