A coalition of Bay Area techies have grouped up to provide online support for residents looking for vaccination appointments with resources such as VaccinateCA to provide a real-time availability of open appointments and make them easily searchable via a website.
Vaccine Appointment Twitter Bot
Security engineer Omar Darwish is the creator of @CovidVaccineCA, a Twitter bot that posts real-time availability of vaccinations in several areas in California, including San Francisco, the wider Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
The bot posts each tweet with a list of the number of appointments, date, location, and whether the vaccination site is a drive-through or medical center. It also posts a link to MyTurn for those wondering if they are eligible to get inoculated. Darwish created the bot to run all day and all night, the San Francisco Gate reported.
The technology allows residents to fully utilize all available appointments for vaccinations. The California Department of Public Health said less than 0.1% of vaccine doses had been considered unusable despite growing fears that the treatment is going to waste. They also revealed that about 10.5 million doses had been administered across the region, with only 10,500 of which being deemed unusable.
