Covid-19 vaccination for people over the age of 18 years began in the second phase of India’s vaccination drive amid limited availability of units across the country. While the drive continues to go on at the best of its capacity, slots are hard to find, especially for those over 18 and below 45 years of age.
The only way to get oneself vaccinated is to register through the government’s official CoWin portal and get a slot booked. Apart from the low availability of slots, the problem is that there is no way CoWin can notify users when a slot is available in their area.
So what do you do if you do not wish to check the website repeatedly for a slot availability? A few new websites have the answer.
These websites essentially act as a notification system to alert those who have registered for the vaccine of a slot availability in their area. Other than this, some also show information on the vaccine centres and the type of vaccine available in the area – Covaxin or Covishield.
These websites make use of CoWIN Application Programme Interfaces (APIs) to serve as a user interface and avail the information. The data, hence, is sourced directly from the government as per the official figures. Users can simply put in their district or pin code and get all the information on vaccine availability in their areas.
In case you want to be notified of slot availability for the Covid-19 vaccine, here are the websites that you can make use of.
Note that these websites can not be used to book an appointment for the Covid-19 vaccine jab. Users are only allowed to do so from the CoWin portal. They can just be notified of vaccine availability through these websites so they can make the appointment in time.
1. VaccinateMe.in
A recent endeavour by health-tech startup HealthifyMe, the new website provides information on a range of queries. This includes separate availability of vaccine slots for 18+ category and 45+ category, type of vaccine available and more.
Users visiting the website can simply search for the info by entering their district or pin code. Once through, VaccinateMe.in lets you filter the results using age group (18+ or 45+), type of vaccine (Covishield or Covaxin) and its cost (Free or Paid).
As for the availability of the vaccine, the website shows the date on which a slot is available and the total number of slots available on the day.
Selecting any date on which there is vaccine availability will lead the users to the next page showing hospital/ vaccine centre names, areas, pin code and the total vaccines units they have. Users can click on any, as per their convenience, to be redirected to the CoWin portal for booking.
In case there is no slot available in the near future, users can opt to be notified through email or WhatsApp.
2. Getjab.in
Possibly the first of its kind in India, Getjab.in is a single-page website developed by four friends, each from a different field of work. The website has no other purpose but to notify you when a slot is available for the Covid-19 vaccine in your area.
It works in a very straight-up fashion. Titled as CoWin slot notifier, the website requires your name, district in India and your email ID to send the mail to when the Covid-19 vaccination slots are open in your area. There is an option to register your phone number, as the website plans to bring SMS functionality for the notification soon.
Users of the website will only receive an email from the Getjab.in once slots are available for vaccination in their area. The website sends out no confirmation for registration or any other emails. It promises to not share or sell the data to anyone.
3. Findmyvaccine.in
Created by Verloop.io, the website works in a straightforward step to notify users of available slots for the Covid-19 vaccine. Note that the website works only for the age group of 18-45 years.
Users visiting the website will have to enter their state and district to find available slots in their region. In case there is no slot availability, they have the option of registering their name and phone number to be notified when a slot is available next. The website also hosts the functionality of notifying users through WhatsApp.
Other than these three, there are several new websites that help with the cause. Findslot.in and Under45.in are some of them. Both of these work in a similar way as the websites above, though they are not fully functional at the time of writing. The websites cite huge traffic and the corresponding rate limits put up by CoWin on the use of its APIs as the reason for not receiving real-time data.
