A computer error potentially allowed Canterbury Covid-19 vaccine patients to see the personal details of hundreds of other people booking appointments to receive the vaccination.
"The DHB rang 50 people last night, apologised and informed them of the actions now being taken," the Ministry of Health said today.
" The key concern of many of those contacted was that their booked vaccinations would go ahead as planned – which they will. This process of contacting individuals continues today. Where individuals are unable to be contacted by phone, the DHB will be making contact through email.
"A relatively small number of people were understandably upset. Again, the DHB has apologised and has also explained that the appointment system remains offline until the issue is rectified and the system thoroughly tested," the ministry said.
"At this stage, the external booking issue is limited to Canterbury DHB and to household members of frontline border workers at that DHB who had been invited to make appointments to be vaccinated. "
Other DHBs considering public booking systems will now wait until the system issue has been resolved.
"Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast DHBs are using a different version of the booking system used in Canterbury, but access is password protected and only available to DHB staff on their internal network," the ministry said.
"These two DHBs are reviewing the security of their internal system in light of the issues identified at Canterbury. The DHBs were not planning to use the public-facing website that has caused the issue in Canterbury. No other DHBs are using the system for making Ccvid vaccination appointments," the ministry said.
At this stage, there is no evidence of any malicious breach, access to this information or sharing of it further and the DHB is investigating further, health officials said.
The Ministry of Health said yesterday that while no private health information was available through the booking system, it was taken down on Friday night after being available to use from 8am the same day.