ARLINGTON, Mass. — Olivia Adams is a mom of two and a software developer. While on maternity leave these last few weeks, she decided to create a COVID-19 vaccine website.
“While he’s napping I pull out my laptop and I do some work on this website,” Adams said. “It started a few weeks ago when my mother-in-law was trying to sign up for a vaccine appointment and was having some trouble.”
Adams noticed how challenging it was for people to book an appointment to get the vaccine, especially for those 75 and older.
>>>MORE: Dozens of people living in low income-housing, 75+ communities get vaccinated for the first time
“I saw that, even though the state had a nice website that listed all of the locations and where to go to sign up, there were still a million different websites that you click through to sign up,” Adams said.
So she just launched https://www.macovidvaccines.com/ where you can see how many slots are available to get the vaccine at each location across the state.
“I thought, ‘this is crazy, there should just be one where you can go and you can see at a glance what’s available and be able to click and go sign up for that appointment,’” Adams said.
Now Adams said she’s getting great feedback from strangers on how much easier it is to get the vaccine with all the information in one place.
“I’ve been getting emails all day ever since I started publicizing this on Friday with people saying, ‘thank you, I was finally able to sign my grandma up for the vaccine appointment, thank you so much,” Adams said.
Adams is now working to make the website more robust and may even hire help to keep it running. That’s why she also started a GoFundMe page to help fund the website. She also hopes to collaborate with state leaders as the vaccine rollout process continues.
>>>MORE: Lawmakers file bill addressing disparities in access to COVID-19 vaccine
“If anyone else has an idea and they’re not sure how useful it’ll be, just go ahead and do it, and you might be surprised at how much people will be thankful for you doing that work and how they’ll want to help you,” Adams said.
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