Helping Texas fight COVID-19

Helping Texas fight COVID-19

3/6/21 — Paul Boomgaart

Thousands of Texans are trying to get one of the COVID-19 vaccines, and those who are signing up on the various waiting lists see months go by without any notifications. The good news is that private businesses such as pharmacies have joined the effort and are now offering vaccinations for approved candidates by appointment. Signing up for one of those appointments is turning out to be challenging due to limited availability and the open appointment slots being released 1 to 10 at a time in different locations around the state. As we look forward to more groups becoming eligible for one of the vaccines this problem is poised to become a bigger issue.

It is a frustrating process to have to refresh pharmacy pages every few minutes and then have to search for stores that may have open slots for a few minutes while figuring out if they are close enough to drive to. Our concern at Kordami is that seniors who most need the vaccine get disillusioned, and give up on trying to find a time slot.

After a number of friends who were trying to get appointments for their elderly parents asked for help, and hearing the phrase “this is just a web problem can’t y’all fix it?” enough times, the Kordami team decided to do something about it.

Earlier this week we published some resources on our website to help Texans find COVID-19 vaccine appointments. We created a COVID-19 Vaccination Dashboard for Texas, that shows major areas where we found concentrations of pharmacies that periodically offered vaccinations. Each area has its own dashboard that shows which municipalities are included and will automatically show available appointments as they become available in real time. There is no need to refresh the page, just keep an eye on it and click on the “Available” button when they show up.

We are always looking for more data sources to add to our dashboards, so if you are connected to any organization that would like to be included please let us know. We look forward to the day when everyone who wants to be vaccinated has received one. Until then we will keep doing whatever we can to help out.

Paul.