Clever website helps Aussies book vaccinations
A helpful new website helps Aussies avoid the queues by letting you know when a Pfizer vaccine appointment becomes available and helping you book the spot – all for free.
The genius website is called CovidQueue and because it’s a free service and it’s needed right now, it’s proving to be incredibly popular among people in Sydney.
The service works by continuously checking booking portals for the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Westmead Hospital, St Vincent Hospital and Sydney Olympic Hub.
To use the site, you only need to click “Get in Line” and once a time and date becomes available, the site will make a ping sound.
CovidQueue was created by 28-year-old Sydney software engineer, Fraser Hemphill. He said he could see we needed something like this when a “nurse friend” was having trouble booking a jab.
Hemphill told the Sunrise program: “I thought, ‘geez that could probably be easier,’ so I just whipped up a script that could check all of the government sites for her and she was able to book in about two minutes.”
Since launching only last week, CovidQueue has had more than 200,000 visits from Sydneysiders who are desperate to get a vaccination during the city’s outbreak.
Hemphill says he built it over a weekend and his “nurse friend” sent it to her friends and they gave him a lot of positive feedback so he launched it on the Internet and “…it kind of blew up from there,” he explained.
The site currently only helps eligible people from Sydney book Pfizer jabs but Hemphill says he’s looking to include AstraZeneca and make the service available for other areas soon.
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