The "human error" that caused long lines at the AIS Arena vaccination clinic on Monday led to 170 vaccine syringes being wasted, ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has revealed.
She said staff realised the clinic had been overbooked when they noticed a long line at lunchtime.
Some people reported having to wait for up to two hours.
Staff cancelled late afternoon appointments, before reoffering those bookings when they discovered an oversupply of full vials.
"The number of appointments that have been entered into the system was the number of appointments that should have been entered for next week, when we expand capacity, rather than the number of appointments that should have been in for this week," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"The team realised about lunchtime that there was a queue forming, that there were more people brought in than they had expected. And so they put on more staff.
"Late in the afternoon [they realised] that they weren't going to be able to get through all of the additional people, even with those additional staff."
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People with appointments from about 6.30pm were asked to not come in for their appointment and were booked for later in the week, Ms Stephen-Smith said.
However, staff realised there were 400 extra doses drawn up and in line with their wastage policy, they called people to offer the jabs.
There were 170 syringes left over at the end of the day, which had to be disposed of.
"In the scheme of the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of doses that have been given in the ACT vaccination system, this is a very small number," Ms Stephens-Smith said.
