Ontario says mass vaccination website mistakenly launched prematurely, leading to scam suspicions
Posted December 22, 2021 8:51 am.
Last Updated December 22, 2021 9:06 pm.
The Ministry of Health says a company it is working with to set up a new mass vaccination clinic in Mississauga mistakenly launched the booking website before it was supposed to go public, leading some to suspect it was a scam to pilfer personal information.
The website, which has since been taken down, offered first, second and third doses at the International Centre in Mississauga, and showed a number of open appointments throughout January.
The site asked for information like the user’s name, phone number and email.
But with no sign of a clinic currently at the sprawling convention centre, some, including Mississauga Councillor Carolyn Parrish, voiced their suspicions. In a tweet, Parrish warned her followers that “there is no clinic there today. Scammers just collecting your info for nefarious purposes.”
https://twitter.com/carolynhparrish/status/1473637964261568514
The Ministry of Health later confirmed that the site was not in fact a scam, but a legitimate government offering that’s in the works, but shouldn’t have gone live yet.
“The website was launched in error by Switch Health and has since been removed,” Alexandra Hilkene, Ministry of Health spokesperson told CityNews.
“Appointments for the new site will be made available through the provincial booking system in the very near future.”
Switch Health released a statement saying that while the website went live “inadvertently” any appointments scheduled during that time will be honoured.
“In the period it inadvertently went live as part of testing, people signed up for appointments. The ultimate decision is to coordinate pre-scheduled appointments out of the provincial booking system as soon as possible, but all appointments that were scheduled via the portal will be honoured.”
With the cat already out of the bag, Hilkene shared a bit more information about the up-coming clinic saying “at full capacity this new site will be able to accommodate as many as 20,000 vaccinations a day.”
More details are expected in the coming days.
