Vaccinate CA: Techies create map showing all COVID-19 vaccine locations in absence of state directory
Is it my turn to get a COVID-19 vaccine? If so, where can I find one? How do I make an appointment?
Several weeks in to California's coronavirus vaccine rollout, the state is still struggling to provide quick and easy answers to those questions. So a group of locals, most of them tech workers, stepped in to help.
"People should come together and make things work," said Manish Goregaokar, a software engineer at Google. "We shouldn't have to wait for someone else to do it."
They created a crowdsourced database of every vaccination location in California at VaccinateCA.com.
Here's how it works: You go to VaccinateCA.com and enter your zip code or select a county. That brings you a list of vaccination sites near you that have been verified by a group of 200 volunteers who phone bank for information.
The site will tell you the location of the vaccine provider, who they're vaccinating right now (people 75 and older, for example) and how to make an appointment.
VACCINE TRACKER: How California is doing, when you can get a coronavirus vaccine
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The creators were inspired by their own issues finding credible and centralized information on where to get the vaccine.
"I have a mother who is over the age of 65 who has also been looking for a vaccine," said Zoelle Egner, one of the brains behind the site. "There are people in my community who are also struggling with this." (Hear more from the creators in the video at the top of this story.)
The site is still growing its list as new providers pop up and volunteers verify user suggestions. If you know of a vaccination site missing from the Vaccinate CA site, you can let them know here.
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