Registration for the coronavirus vaccination for permanent residents of Cyprus aged 61 and over opened this morning. Just minutes after the launch Cypriots dropped the government vaccination portal – the site could not cope with the influx of users.

Kyriakos Kokkinos, head of the sub-ministry of digital policy, issued a formal apology to citizens for the inconvenience caused and promised that the problem would be resolved as quickly as possible. He recalled that over 19,000 doses of vaccines approved for use in the EU – AstraZeneca (Vaxzevria), Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech – will be available for this population. Registration is expected to close at 7pm on Thursday.

The authorities have just announced that the vaccination portal will reopen from 17:00.