It’s no secret that New York City, like many other places in the US, was having a hard time with distribution of covid-19 vaccine. One of the problems is its mess online registration site, which some city officials have denounced as being “Complex, burdensome and buggy.” Officials said this would create an obstacle for many people, especially the elderly, who are considered a priority group for vaccination.
There is List of vaccines in New York it’s coming. Launched in mid-January, it is an easy-to-use website created and run by volunteers that scans vaccine scheduling data from multiple locations, such as clinic, pharmacy and other locations, and groups them together. The site then presents the information on a single page, showing the locations with the available vaccine schedules, the locations that do not have vaccine schedules, and the locations where the information is not updated.
When it finds sites that have vaccination schedules, the New York vaccine list includes a sign-up button, which takes users directly to the site’s availability website. If it sounds like simple people, that’s because it is, and it’s such a breath of fresh air at a time when everything seems harder. The NYC vaccine list is also great because you don’t have to click through endless pages to find what you’re looking for, unlike other websites.
As reported by Virgin, the website addresses one of the biggest challenges of enrolling in online vaccinations in New York: fragmentation. The outlet shows that a variety of entities, including the city, state and hospital groups, distribute the vaccine and use several registration websites. This means that in order to find an appointment, users have to check a variety of places, which can be undeniably frustrating.
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According to the press, software developer And Benamy experienced this direct chaos and decided to contact friends and colleagues to try to create a solution. In a few days, they created the New York Vaccine List, which currently lists vaccine appointment data from about 40 locations.
In recent weeks, Benamy said the site has been viewed tens of thousands of times.
“The tools are available there to allow people to do amazing things, and we thought that if there was at least a chance we could help, we’d give it a shot,” Benamy told Verge.
Their work on the site is not over, however. Benamy said their main priority is to get more information about vaccine availability and that they continue to build more tools to extract information from other locations. At this time, he said the site provides information on appointments in the greater subway area and Long Island. It aims to provide more information about meetings in the surrounding area.
Regarding the support of New York City, Benamy said that the volunteers would like to help in any way they could. They would also welcome any flow of vaccine availability data that could be incorporated into the New York vaccine list.
The solution here is that while launching the vaccine is undeniably a difficult task, there is no need to complicate it further by placing mazes online for people to navigate. If volunteers could make it easier, New York City and other places could certainly do the same.
[The Verge]