Orange County released their solution for scheduling vaccinations, a website called Othena, in order to get people across the county registered for vaccine appointments on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Despite costing the country $1.2 million, the website was riddled with severe glitches and lacked languages besides English. While languages like Spanish and Vietnamese are expected this coming week, their lack of immediate availability is a slap in the face to Orange County’s diverse population.
California is one of the most diverse states in the union, with a Latinx population of 39.4% and an Asian American population of 15.5%. This obligates California’s state government to have inclusive resources available at all levels. Orange County, albeit having a high white population, has an extremely diverse population of 34% Latinx and 21.7% Asian Americans.
OC Health Care Agency Deputy Director of Public Health Services Dr. Margaret Bredehoft, in trying to defend the registration service, said that the lack of language options was a consequence of Othena’s test run prior to translation. However, given that the app was rolled out to the public during its test, this oversight will affect who gets the vaccine and when. Groups like the Latinx community are falling behind, with only 11% of approximately 177,000 vaccinations being administered to the group.
The aim of this software was not to be flawless from the beginning, especially from an app created in a limited amount of time to combat an unwieldy pandemic. The goal was, and still is, to reach out to as many people in Orange County as possible and get them registered for vaccinations. In order to do this, Orange County should have released Othena when all five languages — English, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean — were fully available.
OC Health Care Agency Director Dr. Clayton Chau stated that it would be harder to translate the software again once it has been changed. However, this software differs from previous scheduling software given that the vaccination is not like any other. This software is specifically designed for COVID-19 vaccines, and as such, needs to be expedited.
However, given that half of the population accessing this program are not fluent in English, they will have extreme difficulty trying to achieve this step for their own health and well-being. If it requires more time and work to translate the application, it is a straightforward matter of getting more people to work on it so it can be released on time, with all the necessary resources for the plethora of people who need to use it.
In addition to the language barrier, Othena has also been reported to be extremely glitchy. Many people have had difficulties accessing the application simply due to the glitches they are bombarded with when opening it. Furthermore, many people that need vaccines are seniors 65 and older who may not be completely fluent in English and may also be technologically challenged. The glitches and the language barriers create a confusing experience on the app for these users.
With California and Orange County being so diverse, the lack of consideration when releasing the software is grossly irresponsible. With the effects of the pandemic affecting everyone, we need a vaccine rollout that is accessible to everyone equally.
Tara Kuyilath is an Opinion Intern for the winter 2021 quarter. She can be reached at tkuyilat@uci.edu.