An effort to improve communication surrounding the Tarrant County COVID-19 vaccine waitlist backfired Monday night when thousands of people were sent confusing emails.
"It had a whole bunch of codes and numbers," said Dan Gedal of Burleson who received one of the emails.
Tarrant County Public Health Director Vinny Taneja addressed the confusing emails before county commissioners on Tuesday.
"We were trying to send out a mass notification of their current status and the database had a little glitch so we apologize to the public for that and didn’t have any idea it would happen," said Taneja.
Tarrant County launched a new online tool to allow people to look up their registration information. Taneja said that site is not experiencing any issues but an email sent out notifying people about the new tool contained the glitch.
Tanjea said the email was suppose to be a pro-active way of communicating with people about their registration identifier and test runs of the email were initially successful, but once the county software began sending thousands of emails the glitch occurred.
NBC 5 viewers said they received emails on Monday night that included bracketed numbers in place of their names, eligibility status, date registered, ID numbers, phone numbers, and available appointment options, leaving them unsure about how to proceed.
Tarrant County Public Health addressed the issue on Facebook, saying that the county launched a new tool that would allow people to check their status on the COVID-19 registration list.
However, the email about the new tool did not include each resident's unique identifier, Tarrant County Public Health said.
