COVID-19 Vaccination Appointment Tracker Sites and Bots Can Notify You When a Slot Opens Up Nearby

Using CoWIN to search for slots can be slightly cumbersome, but there are alternatives.

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 6 May 2021 21:35 IST

COVID-19 Vaccination Appointment Tracker Sites and Bots Can Notify You When a Slot Opens Up Nearby

Developer Amit Agarwal has created an open-source vaccine tracker

Highlights

Programmer Berty Thomas is sending district-specific Telegram alerts
Getjab.in looks to notify users as soon as a slot opens up
Users will still have to go the CoWIN website to book an appointment

Vaccination is now open for people between 18 and 44 years as well, but getting an appointment is difficult as slots are filled up fast and searching through the CoWIN portal manually to find an appointment is slow and cumbersome, likely because of the huge number of people trying to use the site in order to get vaccinated. However a number of developers have been creating resources to make it easier for people to find out when the next appointment is available nearby, to make it faster and easier to book a COVID vaccination through the CoWIN platform. Although the government has made changes to the API that is used to get this information, developers have also made changes, and these notifications continue to help people find appointments in these very difficult times.

These sites are even sending alerts, using email, or chat services like Telegram, to let people know when the next vaccine appointment is available nearby. While the CoWIN registration process is simple, these sites take away some of the hassle of booking an appointment by reducing the amount of time spent hunting for slots. However, while these sites offer alerts to an open slot nearby, you will still have to go to the CoWIN portal to book an appointment. These sites don't let you book appointments, only find slots.

Users will have to act fast as these alerts are real-time, and most likely, the stocks are limited.

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COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker for India

Developer Amit Agarwal has made an open-source vaccine tracker that will monitor the vaccine appointment availability near you and will send email alerts as slots become available.

Click here to head to the Google Sheet and ‘Make A Copy' of it in your Google Drive Select Vaccine Tracker in the menu, and click on Enable.
Finish the Sign-In process, and select Go to Vaccine Alerts.
Enter your pincode, your age eligibility, and select ‘Create Email Alert' button. The Google Sheet will run this monitor every day and send an email at 8am every day indicating the availability of vaccine appointments in your specified areas.

Under45.in

Programmer Berty Thomas has come up with a website called under45.in to help people aged 18-44 to search for open vaccination slots nearby. The CoWIN portal shows all vaccination results, and mentions whether the slots are for people under 45 or above, but this means younger people who are now eligible will see lots of results that are not relevant to them. This website only shows appointments for people between 18 and 44 in order to make it easier to search.

People can head to the page, enter their state and district and find slots nearby. Thomas has also started to offer district specific alerts on Telegram, notifying users when the vaccine is available in specific areas. The links to enabling these alerts on Telegram can be found on Thomas' Twitter thread. He issues he is updating this thread with more districts across India.

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Getjab.in

ISB alumni Shyam Sunder and his friends have developed a website called getjab.in to help users get email alerts on open vaccination slots nearby. The website sends email alerts to anyone who signs up asking for notifications on their district.

The site is very simple — just enter your name, district, and email ID, and you'll get a mail whenever a slot is available nearby. The creators also included a note on the site to explain that the l details are only stored to customise the email, although it's faced a few glitches early on. The emails have been paused at the moment due to a bug, but should be operational again soon.

FindSlot.in

Another site that can help you to quickly navigate through the covid appointment bookings, FindSlot.in also uses the CoWIN open API to allow people to search by their city, or by their PIN code, or to enter their State and District to find the nearest booking for a COVID-19 vaccine. As with the other sites mentioned, FindSlot also only let's you look for a booking — as noted on the site, “This web app uses CoWin open API to make it easy for you to find slots. Availability changes in real time. So book your slot ASAP using https://selfregistration.cowin.gov.in.”

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