Waterloo Vaccine Tracker is back to help people find COVID-19 doses

After a busy summer helping Waterloo region residents find appointments for their first and second COVID-19 doses, it was Lilian Toma's hope things would be different when it came time for third doses.

But now that thousands of people are struggling to find appointments for their shots once again, Toma has reactivated the Waterloo Vaccine Tracker Twitter account.

"I started looking back at my account and I've received quite a few messages asking us to come back," said Toma, who is a graduate pharmacy student at the University of Waterloo. "Then I was thinking ... that would be possibly a good idea, especially because availability is hard to come by right now."

Toma has been hard at work reorganizing the original group of three volunteers, with an additional volunteer coming on board. She's also been scraping the web for appointments and verifying appointment information with local pharmacists. 

Although she acknowledges the COVID-19 pandemic has been an ever-changing situation when it comes to variants and vaccines, she says it's frustrating to be in a similar position yet again.

"When we were getting the first and second doses, it was the first time that something like this had happened. You could have much more understanding for why there was such limited spots and why the booking system was glitchy and maybe not as user-friendly as it could be," Toma said.

"There's definitely some understanding there but because it's the second time around, it is slightly more frustrating for sure."

Lessons learned from the first rollout

For the second time around, she's learned how to best utilize her platform while avoiding any miscommunication that arose the first time around.

"I'm going to follow the same rule book that the Vaccine Hunters Canada follow, where you only release information from a trusted source," Toma said.

"Going forward, I'm more so asking for tips from pharmacies and from people working at the clinics just to be 100 per cent sure that there are appointments available or walk-ins happening."

In addition to this, Toma plans on strategically announcing the open appointments she sees to her more than 3,000 followers on Twitter to make sure they're unlikely to get snapped up by the time the word is out.

"Especially with [the] large audience that that we now have on our accounts, I'm going to wait until I see larger numbers of appointments before sharing because they book up instantly almost, especially the small numbers."

Looking ahead the next few weeks

The Region of Waterloo stated Tuesday that regional clinics are at capacity for COVID-19 booster appointments due to overwhelming demand. That happened just one day after the province opened eligibility for those 18 and older to get their shots.

On Wednesday, Vickie Murray, lead for the region's vaccination task force, said the region is adding 12,000 appointments to its Pinebush vaccine clinic in Cambridge and are looking to set appointments into early February in response to demand.

But at a location as big as Pinebush, Murray says on average, about 100 appointments have no-shows a day.

"We know that there's a time lag to cancel appointments on the way that booking system is set up right now ... so if we can help in any way to get that cancellations, we will."

Murray said there is a new email people can use to cancel appointments if they're unable to do so through the online system. That email is: phecovidimms@regionofwaterloo.ca.

While people wait to get an appointment, Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the region's medical officer of health, reassured residents that recent evidence shows two doses of the vaccine is still providing protection against hospitalization.

Moving beyond booster appointments, Toma says her group is considering providing the similar announcement service for PCR appointments and rapid test kits, since demand has gone up for both over the course of the past few weeks.

"We are looking into possibly sharing information on those as well once they become more available, on where to get them," Toma said. "That's something that we're looking into."