SERVING UP VAX FACTS
Through Vaccine Hunters Canada, Ottawa's Patrick Leckey, left, and Eric Herscovich have developed the Find Your Immunization website. The website allows users to input their postal code and see a list of vaccine appointments available nearby.
It was his mom who started 18-year-old Eric Herscovich on his path to becoming a COVID-19 vaccine hunter.
In early spring, she suggested the Carleton University computer science student check out a Twitter account posting about vaccine eligibility and availability so he could figure out when his own opportunity to get immunized would come along.
It's something Herscovich was eager for. “When is my turn? I just want this vaccine, already, so things can start to go back to normal,” he remembered thinking.
But it was more than access to a shot that Herscovich found through Vaccine Hunters Canada, though he has been able to score appointments for friends and family friends.
The operations hub for the community of volunteers dedicated to matching eligible Canadians with vaccination opportunities is on a chat app called Discord that's bestknown in the gaming world.
On this platform, as well as Facebook and Twitter, VHC volunteers disseminate information about chances to get immunized — where, when, who's eligible, and other relevant details — at pharmacies, pop-ups and other vaccination sites.
The VHC Discord server, which now has over 71,000 members, is home to a long list of discussion channels, many devoted to vaccine access in particular regions, but also vaccination success stories, pandemic-related data, pet photos and more.
When he joined VHC on Discord, Herscovich found a channel dedicated to people doing more technical work, where they were sharing individual initiatives like a tool pulling together all of the vaccination appointments at Walmart or Costco.
“I kind of realized that, like, this is very valuable stuff that's just running on someone's computer,” Herscovich said.
“If we can aggregate all of this information, we can create a phenomenal website that can really save and change lives by getting people vaccinated faster.”
Late one night, Herscovich spun up a basic prototype of what a website could look like, and shared it with some of the technical people and higher-ups on the VHC server. The reception was positive and Herscovich started asking around the channels for others who'd like to work on the project.
Among the recruits was Ottawan Patrick Leckey, who came to VHC looking for his own vaccine appointment back in April. Leckey was able to secure an AstraZeneca dose through information shared on Discord, and went on to get appointments for two of his friends, help others on Discord, and eventually join the VHC team.
It's a progression from helped to helper he has seen in others, even if it's just people who managed to get an appointment for themselves, talked to the pharmacist, and report back when more doses were arriving, and to give the pharmacy a call then.
“I don't want this to sound selfish, but I found it very fulfilling, helping other people and especially the people that were close to me in my life and the relief that they felt,” said Leckey, 40, explaining the motivation behind his transition to VHC volunteer.
“We were in the middle of a lockdown, I didn't have anywhere to be, so I figured this was a worthwhile effort to spend my time on.”
Both Leckey and Herscovich estimate they put in more than 40 hours a week, working on the development of the website, now known as Find Your Immunization.
Herscovich, the project and front-end development lead, would finish school or work around 5 p.m. (he's working parttime at a local high-tech company), eat dinner, and work from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m., some nights. Other team members, with day jobs and families, were doing the same.
“I really enjoyed working on this,” Herscovich said.
“There's also just a big difference … working on a project for someone, or for a school project or something like that, versus working on a project for everyone that can help millions of people around the world.”
The first goal with FYI, but not the sole one, was to get more Canadians vaccinated.
The website, offered in nearly two dozen languages, allows users to input their postal code and see a non-exhaustive list of vaccine appointments available nearby, with a focus on pharmacies (for which there's currently no unified booking system in Ontario). In Ottawa alone, FYI has incorporated data from close to 150 pharmacy locations.
“I was on 15 or 16 different pharmacy waiting lists back at the end of March and early April, and had no idea where I stood on any of those or what was going to become available or where things were available,” Leckey, the project's infrastructure lead, recalled. “That was the main problem we were trying to solve for.”
But FYI's creators also hope it could be adapted for use in other countries, where vaccination coverage lags. They built the tool with this goal in mind, Herscovich explained, so someone on the other side of the world could take their code and easily replicate it.
He said he thinks the project can serve as a case study about the power of open data and data philanthropy. FYI vaccine data comes from two main sources: a portal where pharmacies can manually report vaccine availability and related information, including expiring doses, and web scraping at regular intervals from the sites of entities who've granted permission to VHC to pull this data. The latter group includes TELUS Health, Walmart and Sobeys.
“That is quite unheard of, for companies to be handing out their data to volunteer organizations or public organizations,” Herscovich said. “Because of that data philanthropy and open data, we were able to build something amazing and something that's saved lives.”
FYI launched in mid-June, and has seen more than 1.6 million unique searches since then.
Leckey, who is a director of architecture at a travel technology company, said that as long as there's a need for the tool, and for Vaccine Hunters Canada, he doesn't plan on walking away.
As for what Leckey thinks will stick with him about this experience, when he looks back years down the road: “This might sound cheesy, but to be honest, the people that I've been working with,” he said, before correcting himself, with a chuckle. “Volunteering (with), for the last couple of months.
“They're such fantastic people and … really, just want to help.”