WA launches new vaccine locator tool with high-tech partners

The Washington Department of Health launched a new tool to help eligible residents make vaccine appointments.

The project was spearheaded by the Vaccine Command and Coordination System (VACCS) and relied on the public-private partnership. Dan Laster, the director of VACCS, recognized the frustration residents were having in late January and used an analogy to describe it. “This is where we were in January: there were hundreds of haystacks and there were golden needles for appointments for where vaccine was, and the problem was one didn’t know where the haystacks that had the golden needles were,” explained Laster.

On the old site, users searched by county and listed the providers who received vaccines, but there was no way to know if they were currently booking appointments without trying each one.

Now the site allows you to search by zip code and has real-time information about whether appointments are available. The locations with vaccine are shown at the top, and noted with a green check with the words “appointments available”, as well as how recently the data was updated.

Laster says the site was created with the help of Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks. They are working with grassroots volunteer group that created COVIDWA.COM, a group of more than 100 volunteers that came together at the beginning of February and within days created a website that provided up-to-the-minute data on available vaccine appointments. Now the state has a comprehensive site with real-time data, and it is available in 30 different languages, according to Laster.

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Supply has been a huge hurdle this week when the state received about 330,000 doses. But next month, they’re expecting 600,000 doses each week.

“There were 80,000 hits just yesterday and no problem with the performance of the tool, so we anticipate it will serve and scale well as more people are eligible,” said Laster.

On Monday, Amazon will have workers take calls from the state call center to help make vaccine appointments for eligible residents.

Grocery store workers are in the latest group to become eligible, meaning that now 3 million people are eligible for vaccine appointments.

Safeway made vaccination easy, vaccinating more than 5,000 Safeway workers in the state today.

“I’m really excited. I’m excited for things to start going back to normal and this gives such a huge peace of mind,” said Katrina Heston, who works at the Roosevelt Safeway store.

Cox Media Group