On 01 May, the Centre started the third leg of its vaccination drive against COVID-19, in which all citizens over the age of 18 could register themselves to get vaccinated. However, with a huge population of the country belonging to this age bracket, this leg of the vaccination drive isn’t going as smoothly as one would’ve hoped. People have fighting and struggling for a spot for their first dose of the vaccine five days into the drive. The situation was much worse in some cities than in others.
As citizens in India scramble to secure a spot for the COVID-19 vaccine, several websites have recently emerged that claim to be able to assist them. The data for vaccine availability in an area is sourced via the CoWin portal’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
These bots have proven to be a viable solution to this problem. Several bot services are currently available to assist people in scheduling vaccinations. They organise data such as the next available slot or the closest vaccination centre. Users are notified by these services through text, messenger, or email. A number of bot services are now available to help people schedule vaccinations. They keep track of information like the next available slot or the nearest vaccination centre. These services send notifications to users via text, messenger, or email.
Here is a list of bots that are available to book their vaccine appointments:
You can scan for vaccination centres by district or PIN code with this bot. It allows you to add filters such as age group, paying or free vaccine, and Covishield or Covaxin administering centres.
II. GetJab.in
A user’s name, email address, and district are requested by the GetJab bot. When a vaccine slot becomes available in the user’s district, the bot sends them an email to schedule an appointment.
III. FindSlot.in
FindSlot is a website that allows you to search CoWIN for vaccination slots by area, PIN code, or district. It organises the data and displays a list of vaccine clinics in your area that still have openings.
The COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker for India is a Google Sheets-based open-source vaccine tracker that notifies users via email when a vaccination slot becomes available.
V. Under45.in
Another choice is Under45.in, which functions similarly to the others but sends district-specific alerts via Telegram.
VI. Paytm COVID-19 Vaccine Finder
Paytm has launched a COVID-19 vaccine finder that allows users to search real-time vaccine slot availability and receive notifications via Paytm Chats. According to Paytm, the finder is currently active in 780 districts across India.
Data Access To Third Party Restricted By The Government
It is important to note that these bots only send alerts for the availability of slots and vaccination centres in the area; one must go to the CoWIN portal and book your slot manually.
However, third parties’ access to real-time data on vaccine slots across India has been restricted by the Indian government. Several new portals are using this information to alert users of vaccine slot availability. The APIs were made public, according to a government official as reported in an NDTV article, so that private hospitals could get real-time information on their systems. As a result, these centres will be able to have quicker vaccinations.
However, the government quickly discovered that some technology professionals have been abusing the portal’s openness by using these APIs. They’d written a few lines of code to notify them when the vaccine became available in their town. As a result, they were able to book vaccine slots quicker than most. The Indian government has released new CoWIN API guidelines, rendering all websites, applications, tools, and Telegram groups that provided real-time data on COVID-19 vaccine slot availability obsolete. Instead of having to continuously update the CoWIN portal to search for slots, people may use these notifier sites to get updates for available slots. Coders from all over the country had used the government’s public APIs to assist with a vaccine slot appointment. The current guidelines, on the other hand, state that “appointment availability data is cached and can be up to 30 minutes old.”
Furthermore, these APIs have a rate limit of 100 API calls every IP per 5 minutes. This means that all data obtained by websites that use these APIs will be delayed, and the results that appear may not be helpful in obtaining a slot. There is no explanation as to why the government made this decision. The government seems to believe that this activity is unfair to those who do not use such notification services. As a result, data sharing through APIs for real-time vaccine availability information is now limited.
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