Coloradan Creates Coronavirus Vaccine Finder Website

DENVER, CO — A Coloradan created a website that helps people find COVID-19 vaccine appointments at pharmacies.

Nick Muerdter, a computer programmer, decided to use his skills to help his fellow Coloradans after hearing about all the difficulty they've had to face when trying to make appointments.

"I was hearing from a lot of co-workers about the frustration they've been having here with trying to find vaccines for their parents," Muerdter said.

Many Coloradans are waiting for notifications from health centers about when they are eligible to make an appointment, but they check pharmacy websites daily. Muerdter said he wanted to make that process easier.

"That was where it seemed like a very frustrating experience as well ... hearing what people were doing — going to a website, entering a location, not finding anything, then having to click seven steps back on a webpage to try and enter another location. Once I played around with this myself, I could see why people were spending their entire work day just trying to find vaccines for people."

Muerdter decided to develop the tool on his spare time, just to help his fellow Coloradans.

Instead of people having to click through every pharmacy website to check for appointments, Muerdter's search tool crawls the sites and checks for new appointments. You just need to click the "Check for New Appointments" button in the top right of the website for the page to refresh.

The tool searches CVS, Pharmaca, Safeway, Albertsons, Walgreens, Sam's Club, Walmart and other pharmacies.

Unfortunately, due to limited supply, the vaccine appointments are often snatched up within minutes.

"An appointment will show up here on the tool, and by the time they go to the pharmacy's website and enter their details, the appointment slot is gone. So there's still a lot of competition, and it's still not perfect, but it can still be a tool in people's toolbox to make this process easier."

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When the word spread about Muerdter's search tool, many reached out to thank him, including Gov. Jared Polis.

"I love this kind of innovation! People powered innovation to ensure we can get as many Coloradans vaccinated as possible, is greatly appreciated as this is an all hands on deck effort," the governor said in a Facebook post. "If you’re 65 or older, I encourage you to contact your health care provider and make a vaccine appointment."

The process to upgrade the vaccine finder website is ongoing, Muerdter said. But he's already helped many Coloradans receive their first dose.

Around 125 million doses are set for delivery in the U.S. over the next month, the Biden administration said.

"Where we were hundreds of millions of doses short on supply just one month ago, we're now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July," President Joe Biden said in his exclusive Patch op-ed published Friday.

>> You can visit Muerdter's Colorado COVID-19 Vaccine Finder website here.