According to data sent to the Lusa agency by the Ministry of Health, until Thursday the portal validated more than 156 thousand vaccination requests, including those from users on the waiting list, of which more than 67 thousand were scheduled. "There have been many people using self-scheduling, which means that there is confidence in the process and people even show anxiety about getting vaccinated," said Secretary of State for Health, António Lacerda Sales.

Asked by journalists about complaints of problems with self-scheduling, the government official admitted that, "in a vaccination process with the complexity it [has], in which we have already inoculated more than three million doses, it is normal for some problems to come up". Lacerda Sales added that "an effort is being made to improve" so that "occasional events of this type do not occur and the scheduling can improve".

People over 65 can now choose the date and place to be vaccinated through the self-scheduling Portal for Vaccination against covid-19, the registration can be made here https://covid19.min-saude.pt/pedido-de-agendamento/ .

The site allows users over 65 years old, the age group that will now start to be vaccinated regardless of any pre-existing conditions, to choose the vaccination point at which they want to be vaccinated. However, and because it is an age group that presents greater difficulties in the use of digital media, the coordinator of the vaccination task force, Gouveia e Melo, clarified that people can request help from some authorities and institutions that support the population. If they do not register via the self-scheduling portal, these people can also "wait for them to be scheduled by the central process, which will continue to do so", stressed the coordinator.

In the event that there are no vacancies available, users can choose to stay on the waiting list at that vaccination point or choose a date at another vaccination point, explain the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health that developed the platform. Subsequently, the user who made this registration will receive an SMS with the precise time when he will be vaccinated on the day and at the chosen vaccination point. The sending of the message is dependent on whether the user has not yet been summoned for vaccination or has not contracted covid-19 (as long as these assumptions remain), points out the SPMS that developed the computer portal that is part of the responsible task force strategy vaccination plan against the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.