Bots and services that help you book vaccination slots on CoWIN

When the central government began facilitating registrations for citizens over the age of 18 on the CoWIN website the battle to secure a slot among crores of entries became increasingly tough and many began to despair Unlike the drive for those above the age of 45 the younger age bracket did not have the option for onsite registrations and were left to try their luck on the website with only a few managing to find a slot initiallyParas Mehan and Rohan RajpalIn May Rohan Rajpal and Paras Mehan two students of Indaprastha Institute of Information Technology in Delhi were faced with the same hassle To combat this predicament they created a bot for the messaging app Telegram mdash one that notifies users of vacant slots in nearby hospitals and inoculation centres to help them book a slot in a smooth manner A month after its inception the bot has amassed over one lakh users from various parts of the countryldquoWhen registrations opened up in May I tried hard to find a spot for two consecutive days I would randomly check slot openings on the CoWIN website which was timeconsuming I realised that this is something that could clearly be done by a computer that saves manpower in terms of logging in over and over againrdquo Rajpal saysThe bot has also benefitted people in remote regions of the country ldquoWhile there are many solutions built for metro cities our bot also caters to regional areas Since we received requests from people in remote places who didnrsquot know how to use Telegram and access the bot we have also made a video in Hindi to explain the processes to themrdquo Mehan explains The bot can be accessed by searching and selecting the username lsquocowinalertsbotrsquo on Telegram and simply pressing the lsquoStartrsquo buttonBut itrsquos not just this one Several other such bots have been created over the past month to help citizens book a vaccination slot efficiently We have curated a list of five such services especially for those above the age of 18 to aid in the process of booking But please note that all these bots will only notify you about the availability of slots users must book their slots manually on the CoWIN websiteKeeping on trackAvailable in the form of a Google Sheet this service works as a vaccine tracker for all parts of the country Itrsquos an open source document and users are meant to make a copy of the Google Sheet in order to access the information in it They are then notified about the availability via emailLog on to Search for lsquoCovid19 Vaccine Tracker for Indiarsquo on GoogleHelp at handA service called vaccinatemein was launched by fitness app HealthifyMe It uses the CoWIN API application programming interface to send users notifications for available slots via WhatsApp The platform also provides resources for those who wish to donate to Covid19 relief efforts along with mental health assistance from expertsLog on to vaccinatemeinEasy to findIn May digital payments platform Paytm launched the lsquoVaccine Finderrsquo service that checks the availability of vaccination slots and sends alerts when slots near a userrsquos residence open up This reduces the hassle of having to refresh the CoWIN page repeatedlyLog on to Google Play Store to download the Paytm appScripting alertsA Telegrambased alerts bot under45in uses state and district information to send alerts via the app It now has 241497 subscribers and uses a script to poll the CoWIN API for different districts to find slots and automatically send alerts to the Telegram channel The whole process is simple to undertakeLog on to under45inFilter it outfindslotin is a website that allows users to book vaccination slots on CoWIN using filters such as the city district and pin code they live in It then displays a list of inoculation centres both free and paidfor with available slots This site also uses the CoWIN API to help users navigate betterLog on to findslotin