How to Be Alerted of COVID-19 Vaccine Availability Near Me?

With multiple COVID-19 vaccines approved by the FDA, the US has launched the largest vaccination effort in history.

Vaccine availability will occur in waves across the country. And priority groups vary from state to state – sometimes, even county to county.

Many are turning to Visualping to be alerted of nearby COVID-19 vaccine availability, including open slots and priority group updates.

Throughout the US, millions are eligible for the coronavirus vaccine. Vaccine supply is to be distributed based on each state’s adult population, and with a strict priority protocol.

State governors will ultimately have the final say on who is to be vaccinated first. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended those living and working in long-term care homes to be the priority, as well as health care workers at risk of exposure. People 65 and over, essential workers in critical industries and those living with compromised immune systems would be next. The general population will follow suit.

If everything goes smoothly, experts are optimistic most Americans will be vaccinated by June.

But it will be more complicated than that. Some state officials have deviated from the CDC’s recommendations, and some states – even counties – are making new groups eligible at a rapid and uneven pace. While New Yorkers aged 60 and up are now eligible, next door, in New Jersey, it’s people 65 and older who are the priority. In Connecticut, the cutoff age is 55. Hospitality employees in Pittsburgh aren’t eligible, but some of their co-workers are the exception if they smoke.

The changes in vaccination rules are dizzying. With states and cities setting up widely different rules, the discrepancies in eligibility criteria are stoking confusion and anxiety for many.

To help themselves and loved ones stay informed on their locality’s current priority groups, many are turning to website change monitoring tools, like Visualping, to receive alerts when nearby vaccine slots open in their area.

How to Get a Vaccine Alert Near Me

The Wall Street Journal recommends Visualping as a tool to help you snag COVID-19 vaccine appointments.

At preset intervals, Visualping automatically monitors web pages online and alerts you when a change is detected. Instead of bookmarking pharmacy, clinic, government and other vaccine-related pages and manually rechecking them yourself, Visualping can watch these pages – and specific targeted areas of the page – for you. When Visualping detects a change, it sends an alert to your email, notifying you of, say, a vaccine appointment opening, or new eligibility criteria for your state and/or county.

The email displays an easy-to-read screenshot that features all the page changes, highlighted for your perusal. Monitors set up with Text-compare include changes added to the page highlighted in green, and changes removed highlighted in red. Monitors set up with Visual-compare include all changes highlighted in red.

From the screenshot, you can click the Access Site link at the bottom of the email to promptly navigate to the page you’re monitoring. From there, you and your loved ones can immediately sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Note: we compiled a list of the top 200 most popular pages, categorized by state, being monitored by U.S. Visualping users to track where to sign up for COVID-19 vaccine, among other crucial updates (i.e., your state’s current eligbility criteria). The list includes pharmacy, government, hospital, clinic and health center pages.

Refer to these lists to find the best pages to be checking for vaccine information in your area. Never miss an update by using Visualping to monitor these pages for you.

And setting it up is easy.

Tutorial: How to Be Notified of Vaccine Near Me

Here are the steps to be alerted of available vaccine slots in your local pharmacy.

• Step 1: Copy the URL of the COVID-19 vaccination page you wish to monitor. Head over to Visualping’s home page, and paste it into the search field. Don’t worry about signing up first - you do this afterwards. Click Go.

• Step 2: Type the name for your new monitor (Like, “COVID-19 Vaccine Availability at Shoprite, 4th avenue”)

• Step 3: In the Advanced section, select the Visual-compare feature (this is the best option for monitoring vaccine updates because it monitors visual page elements).

• Step 4: Select the frequency of checks – every 5 minutes, hour, day, week, etc.

• Step 5: Enter the email address you wish to have email alerts sent to.

• Step 6: After clicking the link sent to your email to verify the address, you will be prompted to make a password for your account. This is so that you can visit your user dashboard, where you can view all your monitors and previuos alerts, at your convenience.

How to Use Perform Actions Features (i.e., To Monitor Your Password-Protected Pages)

Sometimes, accessing a page entails first filling in a login form. Or, maybe a dropdown menu option needs to be selected, or a button needs to be clicked, in order to access the page you want to monitor.

You can monitor these pages with Visualping by using the Perform Action tools.

When setting up the monitor, use the Perform Action feature, under Advanced, to tell Visualping how to navigate the page – to fill in that form, select from that dropdown menu and/or click those buttons, etc. This feature allows you to instruct Visualping how to access a page, in order to check it for changes.

This feature is commonly used for accessing password-protected pages.

The gist: to track a page that requires pre-action features, when you set up your monitor, click Perform Actions, and then select the action you want Visualping to execute from the dropdown menu, like Click, Type or Wait.

If the bot needs to type something, such as type your email/username into a form, then type the given information into the Words to Type form.

Next, click the element selector (the white arrow), and use it to click the corresponding web page element, up above in the viewport.

If the bot needs to perform another action, such as type your password into a form or click a button, then click + Action, and then the desired action from the dropdown menu. Type the information into the Words to Type form, like your password. Use the white element selector to click the corresponding web page element in the viewport.

Repeat this process until you have instructed the bot to do all the actions it needs to properly access the page to check updates for you.

For a more detailed description of monitoring password-protected pages, check out our post How to Fill In Forms Using Pre-Action Features.

Beyond Vaccine Monitoring

With over 2 million users, the website change detection tool is used to monitor web pages for a variety of reasons. Users track product availability with in stock alerts when products become available again. It’s also a price tracker by monitoring product pages and sending you price drop alerts when there’s a sale on a product you were thinking of purchasing.

Users keep tabs on social media by monitoring Facebook pages and Instagram profiles for changes. Businesses use Visualping as a tool for competitive monitoring to produce competitive intelligence and regulatory compliance by monitoring changes in the regulatory landscape.

Happy vaccine monitoring. :-)