This is a Twitter account you’ll want to follow if you’re not yet vaccinated.
San Francisco-based security engineer Omar Darwish has created @CovidVaccineCA, a Twitter bot designed to let users know when the state’s MyTurn website has available COVID-19 vaccine appointments.
"I was catching up with my parents and my mom was telling me she was having a really hard time scheduling an appointment for my grandmother," he told KCBS Radio of his family's experience with the vaccine distribution system in Texas. "When my mom told me that, I initially started looking at how Texas does it's scheduling. I learned they didn't had a centralized booking system, so it was essentially a dead end."
Then, he got to work on California's vaccine appointment system, one plagued in its early days by slow rollout and distribution equity issues.
"Obviously Twitter was the easiest solution," he added.
The account’s banner says "Only for California" and it practices what it preaches.
The updated availability of vaccine appointments covers the Bay Area, the greater Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. "My hunch was that if i could provide information about the biggest cities first, it would provide the most value," he said of the locations.
Followers will see locations, future dates and the number of available appointments, along with a link to California's MyTurn website.
His goal, Darwish said, is to help Californians use the state's notification system in a way that benefits them, short of sitting at a computers and hitting refresh.
"We're happy to fill the gaps until that exists," he explained.
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