Ontario's vaccine passports officially kicked off on September 22, meaning Ontarians will have to show their proof of vaccination to enter certain settings.
These include public places like restaurants, movie theatres, gyms, sporting events, and other select indoor spaces. Enhanced vaccine certificates with their own QR codes won't officially be available until October 22 when the government rolls out its verifier app, so in the meantime, Ontarians are asked to print off their documents and show their proof of vaccination on paper, or keep a digital copy of their vax receipt on their phone.
Some Ontarians were too quick for the draw, as one Twitter user shared a screenshot of the website with a notice that it would be under maintenance until 8 a.m. this morning.
"Day 1 one of the vaccine passport program......," another Twitter user wrote, tagging Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "Can't get anything right," they said.
Ontario Health's COVID-19 site states that this system could be unavailable to users each week for regular maintenance, which takes place from 11 p.m. on Tuesday to 8 a.m. on Wednesday and again from 11 p.m. on Saturday to 9 a.m. on Sunday.
It also mentions that the website works with "most modern browsers" on both your computer and mobile device, and supported browsers include Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and the Android native browser.
Another user shared a different screenshot at 8:14 a.m., after the site maintenance was scheduled to end, which revealed that something went wrong with the website entirely.
"Sorry, something went wrong," the notice on the site said. "Sorry for the inconvenience. We're working on it."
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Another issue Ontarians were experiencing this morning was long wait times in the vaccine receipt queue on the website, with a Reddit user sharing that there were 3,919,568 users waiting to access their COVID-19 immunization records.
The screenshot points out, however, that the last status update was at 12:51:44 a.m., which would have been right during the middle of the site's maintenance hours.
We tried it for ourselves and were directed to this online queue after entering all the info required to obtain proof of vaccination.
One commenter on the thread said it only took them five minutes to get a PDF copy of their vaccination record.
If the site gives you trouble, you can also check out this volunteer-run app that will download your COVID-19 immunization records right to your phone and create an easy-to-scan QR code.
Alexandra Hilkene, press secretary to Health Minister Christine Elliott, told Narcity that the website is "back up and running again."
"Many Ontarians already have a copy of their receipt from when they got vaccinated or took the time over the last few weeks to download or print their receipt in preparation for today," Hilkene said.
Health Canada has a robust website with all the latest information on COVID-19 vaccines and can answer any questions you may have.
This article's left-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.