KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. — The number of people hoping to sign up for a COVID-19 vaccination in Knox County is encouraging but overwhelming.
On Friday, the Knox County Health Department started taking appointments for an upcoming vaccination clinic at 11 a.m. On that day, the KCHD received more than 70,000 calls, far more than could be handled by the handful of people working to answer them.
“To put it into perspective, the Amazon customer service center in Washington has more than 500 workers—adding hundreds more for seasonal call volume—and receives ‘thousands’ of calls a day,” said Chief Technology Officer Zack Webb. “We received nearly 50k in one hour and are simply not equipped or staffed to handle that volume of calls.”
The Knoxville Chamber reached out to two of the county’s largest call centers, which reported receiving an average of 12,000 and 25,000 calls a day, according to a press release.
Spanish Version: Más de 70,000 llamadas abrumaron línea telefónica de COVID-19 en Condado de Knox el viernes
The KCHD Hotline, which is 865-215-5555, was created to answer questions from the public about COVID-19. As vaccines become available, the employees are also helping schedule vaccination appointments for those who can't use the online portal. When vaccine appointments are open, the calls to that number increase exponentially.
KCHD said there was one instance where someone called 15 minutes before the registration opened in an attempt to keep a staff member on the line to reserve an appointment at 11 a.m.
In addition to those trying to call in, there were more than 4,000 people on the health department’s COVID-19 Information webpage just before 11 a.m. waiting for the registration link to go live. KCHD said that’s four people trying to register for each open appointment without taking into consideration anyone calling the Public Information Line.
Those appointments filled up in minutes.
"We are pleased that people in the community are so eager to get the vaccine,” said Senior Director and Public Health Officer Dr. Martha Buchanan. “But we continue to ask for patience as we work through the best way to notify people of available vaccines. Our employees are doing valuable work answering constituent calls and providing important information regarding COVID-19. We want you to call them, but we also ask you to remember how many of them there are answering those calls.”
“Even if we did have enough staff to answer this volume of calls, we can’t make appointments to administer vaccines we don’t have,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs. “The fact remains, there were only 1,000 appointments to be given. We will get more vaccine, but we are at the mercy of delivery from the State who is at the mercy of delivery from the federal government.”
KCHD will continue to schedule vaccination clinics when it receives more vaccine, and the county is still looking for ways to improve the process.