Have you taken the Covid-19 vaccine shot? Be grateful to these techies

If you’ve been able to book a vaccine slot via WhatsApp or Telegram s, you have these techies to be grateful to. And India’s young software talent is especially excited to see their open-source tools penetrate rural communities.

Berty Thomas, a resident of Pallikaranai in Chennai, had waited three months to get the Coronavirus vaccine. The 35-year-old business analyst and hobbyist programmer learnt on April 28 that the Indian government would now allow those between 18 and 44 years to get the jab and advance registrations had opened. 

He logged onto the national CoWIN app that controls India’s Covid-19 immunisation programme, but was unable to book a slot. Because the app demands that you enter an OTP to check availability of stock at a centre on the basis of the pin code imputed, and a metro like Chennai has hundreds of centres, Thomas realised this was going to be a struggle. He searched for the Application Programming Interface (API), which was publicly available on CoWIN.

A woman takes a jab at Mumbai’s Nair Hospital on May 12 after the government opened vaccination for those between 18 and 44 years of age. Pic/Ashish Raje

Thomas had hit gold. He used the API support to write a script, which would check the availability of slots and then notify the user. “I booked a slot for myself and then shared the script with friends and family over WhatsApp. Messages poured in, requesting me to find slots as far as Bengaluru and Coimbatore. But my script was specific to Chennai. I realised that this was not a city-centric issue,” he says. So, Thomas created under45.in, which could be used pan-India. When he tweeted about it, an avalanche of enquires came from across India. “On May 1, the traffic on the portal was overwhelming, so I had to move the script to another server. This was when I thought about linking the solution to district-specific Telegram channels. Telegram is an instant messaging app, which is now being used to send notification alerts directly to users [as soon as a slot is open]. They can then quickly book a slot on CoWIN,” he tells mid-day. As of now, over 7.5 lakh users of under45.in have subscribed to Telegram alerts.

Also Read: How to win race for Covid-19 vaccination registration

Chennai-based Berty Thomas, 35, faced challenges while booking a slot for himself. He used the API from CoWIN app to write a script that sends alerts to users as soon as a vaccination slot opens up in their area

According to The Lancet, a peer-reviewed general medical journal, India has vaccinated less than 2 per cent of its 1.3 billion population. In a report published in the journal dated May 8, titled, India’s Covid-19 emergency, it said: As of May 4, more than 20.2 million cases of Covid-19 had been reported, with a rolling average of 3,78,000 cases a day. At the federal level, India’s vaccination plan has fallen apart. The government abruptly shifted course without discussing the change in policy with states, expanding vaccination to everyone older than 18 years from May 1 onwards...This started creating mass confusion and a market for vaccine doses in which states and hospital systems competed. India must increase vaccine supply and set up a distribution campaign that can cover not just urban, but also rural and poorer citizens, who constitute more than 65 per cent of the population (over 800 million people).

Getjab.in was co-created by four software developers, Azhar Hussain, Shyam Sunder (in picture), Anurag Kishore and Akshay Nautiyal, to smoothen the process of vaccine slot booking. This website lets you sign up for email alerts when slots open up in your district

Friends Shyam Sunder, Azhar Hussain, Anurag Kishore and Akshay Nautiyal make up the team behind slot notifier getjab.in. The Indian School of Business (ISB) alumnus, Sunder says, “We knew about the public APIs being available for CoWIN back in mid-April, but didn’t feel the need to build something like this because slots were available on CoWIN for 45+ and walk-in registrations were also going well. By May 1, we realised the gap between demand and supply was widening, and decided that even if one of us were to get a slot soon, we would have to build a tech solution. And so, getjab.in was launched to ensure that we reached as many people as possible across India who were not as tech-savvy as us.”

They launched the site on May 2 at 5 pm using commercial SaaS tools like carrd.com, airtable and AWS SES. This website is pretty straightforward in that you register yourself with your name, email ID, and phone number (optional). You also need to select the district you reside in, so that you can receive notifications about available slots at centres in your area. “As of now, we have around 4,00,000+ users. We have confirmation that around 1,600 people have booked slots through us. Unsubscribes are at 3 per cent of the overall user base. I expect that the majority is still trying to get a slot. We don’t have a way of knowing that for sure,” Sunder adds. The founders get about 2,000 sign-ups every 30 minutes. The flood of users has thrown up a unique hurdle—sending emails to lakhs of users. They have had to work with multiple email providers to figure a solution. The website is, of course, free of cost. “We are doing this as a service to our fellow countrymen. We don’t see value in making this commercial,” Sunder says squarely.

Dr Benazir Patil, CEO, School

In Bengaluru, Shubhendu Sharma, the founder of internet access startup Wi-Fi Dabba, was once again inspired by personal disappointment when he tried booking a slot on April 28 and failed. Together with partner Jeroz Nishanth, he launched findslot.in. What started as a tool for self use, ended up becoming a public utility service. “I had no intent to open it up beyond friends and family. On April 30, I shared it with Jeroz, who is a Twitter wizard, and once we had received positive feedback from common people who were able to book real slots, we thought we must open it up to the public,” Sharma says. Nishanth has been leading the online marketing to get it to more people. 

Interestingly, unlike other websites, findslot.in does not send alerts to users. “I am of the opinion that ‘alerts’ give an undue advantage to only a section of people. I believe it should be a level playing field for all to put in an effort and come online to find a slot. The idea was never to ‘game’ the system and offer undue advantage to the tech savvy,” Sharma says, who gives special attention to make it easy enough for senior citizens to use, too. 

Nishanth says that since the launch of the website on April 30, they have had more than 500K unique users search for slots. “We have more than 150k successful slots search out of close to a million searches to our credit in the last 10 days. We do not track or ask the user to register. It is a zero tracking website.”

Jeroz Nishanth, co-founder of data management company TEZR, created findslot.in. Nishanth says that since the launch of the website on April 30, they have had more than 500K unique users search for slots

Then, on May 5, the government threw in a spanner. It said that APIs are subject to a rate limit of 100 API calls, per 5 minutes, per IP. “The appointment availability data would now be cached and may be up to 30 minutes old,” the government’s Aarogya Setu website said. In simple words, CoWIN has now limited the API hit rate. “This means, you can’t keep querying their database infinitely. This has certainly presented a challenge for us to fetch real-time slots and present our users with most recent and up-to-date information. We are in touch with concerned authorities to find a solution to this problem,” Sharma informs. The programmers say there is no clarity on why the government made this change given that these notifier sites are not for profit.

The software workarounds, however, are raising fears over whether they handicap the chances of the lesser privileged, and those with no or little access to the Internet. Walk-in appointments were allowed in most states, and they took care of those whose age, digital literacy or net connectivity was posing a problem. But since last week, vaccine by-appointment-only has been made the norm. In Mumbai, the BMC introduced fresh guidelines on May 6 to stop all walk-ins after a crowd that had gathered at BKC Jumbo Centre went out of hand after a long wait, and a near stampede-like situation occurred when the crowd heard that vaccine supply had arrived on site. 

Agra-based developer Amit Agarwal created COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker on Google Sheets that automatically monitors vaccine availability near your location and sends email alerts to users as stocks become available

Agra-based Google developer Amit Agarwal created an open source tool called Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker by simply using Google Sheets. The tool will automatically monitor vaccine availability near your location and send you an email alert as stocks become available. It also lets you set up a preference for the brand of vaccine you’d like, Covaxin or Covishield. “Whenever we build something around Google platforms, it reaches a small section of the people. You cannot use these tools on an old mobile phone, for instance. Frankly speaking, I am a small developer and do not have the bandwidth to reach the masses. When I launched the tracker on May 1, my tweet about it went viral. Almost every media house covered it. And since they have big reach, I believe it is their coverage that may have created awareness in rural areas [about the tool],” Agarwal says. 

Others too have joined the bandwagon, including payment gateway Paytm, which has launched the Vaccine Finder section. HealthifyMe is an Indian digital health and wellness platform, which launched the VaccinateMe platform using the CoWin API. Agarwal agrees that instead of offering access to the API, it would be easier for the government to integrate it with CoWIN. “If the government puts the notification feature on CoWIN or Aarogya Setu apps, the procedure will become faster and easier for everyone trying to get a vaccine booking,” he adds.

Nishanth says that findslot.in has users from close to 1,600 cities, who have at least made one search. This number offers a clear indication that the site is widely useful in tier II/III as well as rural India. Sunder says that for getjab.in, about 55 per cent of users come from 20 districts. “We have users from 723 of 755 districts in India. We are seeing increased registrations from rural areas,” he shares. 

Dr Benazir Patil, CEO of SCHOOL (Society of Community Health Oriented Operation Link), a non-profit that helps vulnerable communities and works to improve the lives of the  elderly via projects in Maharashtra (Mumbai and Pune), Madhya Pradesh (Gwalior, Bhopal) and Jharkhand (Giridih), feels not enough is being done to penetrate the interiors of the country. “In a queue of typically 200, only 30 tech-savvy people end up getting a jab. The remaining 170, who are sent home, usually live in the slums. They don’t even know that they must carry an ID proof. Imagine how many in rural areas stand a chance.”

This concerns those who are keen to take the vaccine. There continues to be the challenge of convincing those who are vaccine hesitant, and the number of this segment is highest in rural areas. Dr Pawan Pathak, director programme, SCHOOL, says, “The uptake of the vaccine programmes has been slow because of scepticism as well as a lack of awareness among the poor and rural residents. Our volunteers have been working to create awareness on COVID-appropriate behaviour, but also help people book vaccine slots on the CoWIN app.”

The Aga Khan Rural Support Program India (AKRSPI) works in over 2,500 villages across Bihar (Samastipur, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi, Vaishali, Muzaffarpur) Gujarat (Surat, Rajkot, Bharuch, Junagadh, Surendranagar, Tapi, Narmada, Morbi, Porbandar, Gir Somnath, Devbhumi Dwarka, Dangs) and Madhya Pradesh (Khandwa, Khargone, Barwani, Dhar, Burhanpur). The organisation is promoting vaccination among rural communities, supporting government-run rural health centers by equipping them with essential material including oximeters, N-95 masks, oxygen concentrators, PPE kits. They have also been helping citizens navigate the CoWIN app. “Had we known about these techies creating apps to send alerts, we would have tried to build a bridge between the technology and its most needy users in remote areas. We want as many people as possible to book slots and get jabbed,” an AKRSPI member told mid-day.

Thomas says each one doing their bit could help extend the chain. “I share posts on Twitter telling those who have access to my website to help others who don’t. I saw a tweet from a subscriber of under45.in recently where he said that he was helping 70 more people book slots. My hope is that if we can’t reach everyone, our tech-savvy subscribers use their privilege to help others book a slot.”

2,000
Number of users that arrive on getjab.in every 30 minutes

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