Not mentioning the occasional administration chaos and website stability issues that some countries have encountered. On top of that, the vaccine is distributed in phases, so you may be eligible to get the vaccine any day now. Here is a technological COVID-19 life hack for you. ;)
How to book a vaccine for yourself or your family via website change detection
There also may be more vaccination centres close to you, all of them with a limited amount of appointments. It is easy to miss one, and, of course, you cannot sit by the computer, refreshing the appointment calendar until something changes. Eventually making a COVID-19 vaccine appointment can therefore be a bit tricky. So the question is straightforward - how to be prepared and make sure you don’t miss the opportunity to get vaccinated?
There is an easy way to book and get online info about appointments or new changes immediately. How? Using sken.io for website change detection. This will notify you of any changes.
Step 1: Find the relevant website for booking
This depends on where you live. You may need to do some research to find the nearest vaccination centre. Some countries have an online centralized booking system for vaccine appointments. In other cases, you may need to track the registration of COVID-19 vaccination via your local authority (province, state, etc.). Some places also do not offer online booking for COVID vaccination. We cannot help you with that, sadly.
A few links to start you off:
- FRANCE - https://www.sante.fr/cf/centres-vaccination-covid.html - national portal with info about all vaccination centres
- ITALY - https://www.governo.it/it/cscovid19/report-vaccini/
- SPAIN - https://www.mscbs.gob.es/organizacion/ccaa/directorio/home.htm - interactive map
- GERMANY - the vaccine is administered by the German states. You can find a few of them here: https://www.impfterminservice.de/impftermine
- GREAT BRITAIN - centralized system to be found at https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/
- CZECH REPUBLIC - centralized booking system - https://registrace.mzcr.cz/
- SLOVAKIA - centralized booking system - https://www.old.korona.gov.sk/covid-19-vaccination-form.php
Oh, and if your country is planning to open more COVID vaccination centres, you are able to track them too. ;)
Step 2: Set up sken.io to monitor the website for changes
Paste the address of the website for COVID vaccination booking into our website, sken.io. The easiest way is to use the exact URL where you would choose your appointment from a timetable. There may be no appointments now, but once that changes, you can have our system track the website change.
Simply select an element (such as the timetable with appointments) or an area of the website that you wish to keep an eye on. Set up the frequency or schedule of monitoring website changes. You can even have the coronavirus portal checked every minute.
The point is that if the website adds new appointments, you don’t need to open it manually. Our automated system will keep watch and do the work. This removes the frustration of refreshing the page - you are free to do whatever you want to do.
IMPORTANT: To avoid false alarms, you should select only parts of the website that will change if a coronavirus vaccine appointment becomes available.
A custom schedule is useful in several situations. For example, you might not have access to booking during work, so it makes no sense to get notifications then. Set it up so that we will notify you when you have time.
Step 3: Fill in the details
Let us know where to send you a notification - we can send you a message via email, mobile app or phone. You can also make use of our Google Chrome extension. Just choose what works best for you.
Step 4: Kick back and leave the tracking of COVID-19 appointments to us
We are now monitoring COVID-19 vaccination appointment slots on the website(s) you have chosen. If anything changes, we will let you know.
And voilá! You are done. You can even monitor several websites at the same time. That way, you may be able to book COVID-19 vaccines for family members or check for any kind of news regarding coronavirus vaccination in your country.
Depending on how many “checks” you need, this might even be for free, or for a price of a few Euros. And that’s nothing compared to the time you save… not mentioning that you are doing this for your health. Literally a life hack!
