Strategies to secure a vaccine appointment online
Being a computer whiz ought to be the last thing standing between the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine and eligible arms.
Yet wrestling with confusing, overlapping vaccine websiteshas become a major source of stress for American seniors and the family and friends helping them get shots. In places where supply is low, people are trying appointment sites 20 or 30 times — only to watch bookings vanish because they moved too slow.
Some volunteer appointment finders and people who look for spare doses now call themselves “vaccine hunters.”
“This is sort of an obsession,” said Dasha Hermosilla, of Arlington, Va., who has learned appointment systems across multiple states and helped 30 people get shots. “They are struggling and are always amazed and thrilled when they wake up to texts and messages that I got them an appointment.”
Dominique Rychlik, of Bethesda, Md., said someone helped her children, who work at grocery stores, get appointments — so she wanted to pay it forward.
“I can move very quickly to secure an appointment, much more so than the elderly who are prioritized,” she said. “I think it is neat how people are stepping up.”
Here is some of your best advice for how to work appointment systems for yourself or someone else.
Make it a team effort
Some vaccination centers release appointments in a randomized lottery system, so it can be useful to have multiple people trying simultaneously, said Philadelphia resident Carol, who asked to be identified only by her first name.
“It really helped to have multiple people log on to the site to increase the chances that one of us would be assigned a number lower than the number of appointments to be assigned,” she said. “We connected by phone to help answer any of the website questions about health conditions and recent exposure. When we secured the appointment for the eligible person in question, I could not stop crying with relief.”
For Jina Noland, of Fairfax County, Va., getting an appointment for her mom required efforts by herself, her brother, her husband and her mother.
“You need multiple people calling and constantly checking websites. You need persistence. You need to try all options and not just focus on one thing,” she said. “As a member of Generation X, I was able to use all my skills from getting concert tickets back in the day.”
Don’t get slowed by the details
Across many appointment systems, time is of the essence.
“Once you get a tentative appointment — and are filling in the form online — skip anything that is not required (emergency contact, primary physician). It is imperative that you act quickly — or your spot will be gone,” said Kim Murphy, of Oak Beach, N.Y. “I’ve done 14 elderly relatives and neighbors so far, and this seems to help.”
It’s risky, but Arlington volunteer Ms. Hermosilla said she has discovered many appointment systems don’t care if some of the information you enter upfront is inaccurate.
“Either have it handy or ... make it up. That may sound terrible, but when in doubt I make up information,” she said. “If I have a slot in front of me, I’d rather throw any numbers in there and see if it takes so I can snag the appointment.”
Select later dates
Melissa Daddio, of Takoma Park, Md., suggests not battling with everyone else to nab the earliest appointments. “Once you get the calendar open for scheduling, it’s like when you get access to Ticketmaster to select your seats for a hot concert,” she said. “Everyone is going to try to first click on the first time slot they see available for a particular day (like everyone first clicks on the front row seats). Scroll to later, more random time slots to ensure you’re not selecting the same slot hundreds of others are clicking at the same time as you.”
Spread out your chances
Since there’s no centralized vaccine system, your likelihood of nabbing an appointment increases with each additional route you try.
“Register for multiple sites,” recommended Jim Hoffman, of Westminster, Colo. “I registered with seven healthcare providers.”
Master the website ‘refresh’
Reloading websites is often a critical step to discovering new appointment inventory. But Merrit Jacobs, of Lake Worth, Fla., said some people are confused on how to do that.
“The other thing that is critical ... is the use of the refresh feature,” he said. “Most older people think that you need to close the browser and open it up again when you say refresh. So I provide an image of what the refresh symbol looks like.”
In most web browsers, it looks like a circle with an arrow inside.
Or, you could save yourself the clicks by making websites reload themselves.
“For webpages that require constant refresh to see new availability, consider using an auto-refresh extension that allows you to set the refresh interval,” suggested Liliana Bastian, of Austin, Texas. She used Easy Auto Refresh for Chrome. “Just watch for any changes in availability that may interest you.”
Be persistent
“Don’t give up on a session right away, even if the website crashes/freezes,” said Bill Citara, of Sarasota, Fla. “I got my first appointment after the Charlotte County website crashed, then came back live a halfhour or so later.”
Persistence paid off for Mr. Citara.
“It took me several hours of trying on three different days before I could even get into the system, despite having several browser windows open a good 15 minutes prior to the site going live,” he said.
Don’t totally give up on Facebook
Facebook is a hotbed of vaccine misinformation, but Deborah Vogel, of South Pasadena, Calif., said she still finds it useful.
“The resource that most helped me, amid all the others you discussed, were the dreaded Facebook neighbor groups,” she said. “I joined as many as I could stand and got tons of info. One group had an MD who seemed to have inside sources on where the next availability would be.”
Make your own alerts
To help her parents in Texas, Amy Jones, of Washington, realized she needed better information.
“I learned how to change my Twitter settings to get a phone notification whenever the Houston Health Department tweeted,” she said.
“I also discovered that I could install an add-in on [Google] Chrome that would monitor webpages for changes,” added Ms. Jones. “I used Distill.io. I found eight to 10 vaccine signup pages and monitored them. Every time something changed, an alarm would sound on my computer. Lots of false alarms, but eventually success!”
Other services vaccine hunters are using to automatically check sites for changes include Visualping and the Chrome extension Web Alert. (I haven’t personally tested all these services, so use with caution.)
And tech-savvy people like Noah Marcus from Berkeley Heights, N.J., set up systems that also help others.
“I have created two Twitter bots for two counties in New Jersey (Union and Bergen)and am putting together a third (for Essex County) that tweet whenever new appointments are released by the county,” he said. He noted the Union bot is currently out of commission because the county added a Captcha to its website.
“This started out as an effort to get my partner’s 74year-old dad the vaccine,” Mr. Marcus added, “but I immediately knew everyone should have access to this information.”