Dresden (dpa / sn) - The telephone hotline for assigning vaccination appointments in Saxony starts later than planned.

There were technical problems, said the head of the German Red Cross (DRK) in Saxony, Rüdiger Unger, in Dresden on Tuesday evening.

Originally the hotline for the allocation of vaccination appointments was to be activated on Thursday.

For the time being, appointments could still only be made via the online portal, it said.

Unger expected that the telephone hotline could not be used until the weekend at the earliest.

The Ministry of Health and the DRK had previously defended the Saxon approach to vaccination.