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COVID-19 vaccine requests overwhelm phone system

COVID-19 vaccine requests overwhelm phone system

Macon County Public Health was overrun with phone calls to schedule COVID-19 vaccination appointments and testing appointments on Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 11-12.

In the past 24 hours, officials say they received over 500 live calls and an additional 300 voicemails requesting testing or vaccinations. 

“We apologize for the difficulty you may be experiencing with our phone system. The volume of calls for COVID-19 testing and vaccination has overwhelmed the county phone system,” said Health Director Kathy McGaha. 

Macon County IT is working with Frontier to resolve the system capacity in hopes of having the issues resolved as quickly as possible.

The Macon County Health Department can be reached at 828.349.2517. The call center is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m., closing daily for lunch from noon-1 p.m. until further notice.

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