Huge Ma, a 31-year-old software engineer for Airbnb, was stunned when he tried to make an appointment for a coronavirus vaccine for his mother in early January and saw that there was dozens of websites to check out, each with its own registration protocol. The city and State the appointment systems were completely separate.
“There must be a better way,” he said, remembering what he thought.
So he developed one. In less than two weeks he made TurboVax, a free website that compiles the availability of the three major immunization systems in New York City and State and sends real-time information to Twitter. It cost Mr. Ma less than $ 50 to build, but it offers an easier way to track appointments than official city and state systems.
Supply shortages and problems accessing vaccination appointments were some of the obstacles to equitable vaccine distribution in New York City and across the United States, officials acknowledged.
Statistics recently released by the city showed that vaccines are distributed disproportionately to white New Yorkers, not the black and brown communities that suffered the most from the first wave of the pandemic.
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The disparities were particularly striking among city dwellers aged 65 and over: Only 12 percent of the estimated 210,000 city residents in this age group who were vaccinated were black, for example, even though blacks make up 24% of the city’s population.
“The only way for them to access these dates is to use a very, very complicated technology platform that in itself marginalizes the community of seniors that I serve,” Eboné Carrington, director said last month. General of Harlem Hospital.
So some volunteers in New York, as well as Texas, California and Massachusetts, tried to use their technological skills to simplify this process.
The most ambitious online volunteer assistance effort in New York is New York Vaccine List, a website that compiles appointments from more than 50 immunization sites – city, state and private. About twenty volunteers write the code, contact community organizations and call vaccination centers to display the availability of centers.
Inspired by Vaccines CA., a volunteer-run vaccine research site in California, NYC Vaccine List not only lists available appointments in cities and states, but also allows users to click through certain available appointment times.
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The site also offers insight into the competitiveness of the appointment process. At 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 28, for example, hundreds of openings appeared, including 45 at the city’s Brooklyn Army Marine Terminal, and many more at a site run by the city of the Bronx. In 15 minutes they were gone.
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