California volunteers create crowdsourcing site for available vaccines
(Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO - Booking an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine has proven to be more than challenging.
Now, a California-wide volunteer effort is working to make finding an appointment easier.
Often times, sites, like many in the Bay Area, either have appointments fully booked or have run out of their share of COVID vaccines. This week, the San Francisco Department of Public Health said they could run out of its dosages as soon as Thursday.
Now, hundreds of volunteers are willing to do the leg work to find Californians, especially those 65 and older local sites to make a vaccine appointment.
According to its website, VaccinateCA.com uses volunteers to call sites all throughout the state approximately every 36 hours to check in on COVID-19 vaccine statuses.
On its homepage, finding an available vaccine is broken down by region; Northern California, San Francisco Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. It lists centers in each region, whether they have vaccines, and whether you need to make an appointment.
The website’s founders are a team of tech-industry businessmen and women. On their page, they admit their information may not be 100% accurate but say they are constantly updating.
"We’re doing our best, but can’t make guarantees," the site reads.
With an active Twitter page, the site encourages medical providers and workers to provide any additional information to help make the process of booking a COVID-19 vaccine easier.
As of Wednesday morning, the state recorded an additional 22,403 cases to its more than 3 million tally.
According to the state COVID-19 dashboard, roughly 2 million of the state’s vaccines have not yet been used.