Somerville Couple Rallies Volunteers To Secure Vaccine Slots

SOMERVILLE, MA — A Somerville woman is organizing volunteers to help eligible Massachusetts residents secure COVID-19 vaccine appointments. Diana Rastegayeva came up with the idea while booking an appointment for her grandfather in Florida while she was on maternity leave in January.

"The process was complicated and stressful, and it led me to look into what it looked like in Massachusetts," Rastegayeva wrote on a GoFundMe page for her website. "Upon discovering that it was even worse than in Florida, I started helping my friends and loved ones book appointments in Massachusetts."

From there, Massachusetts COVID Vaccine Help was born. Rastegayeva rallied a group of over 20 volunteers and her husband, Jonathan Huggins, created a website for more to sign up.

There were nearly 250 volunteers as of Wednesday, according to Rastegayeva's GoFundMe campaign, which is accepting donations for costs such as web hosting and automated alert services. Rastegayeva says she will donate the remaining funds to the Greater Boston Food Bank.

"Our volunteers not only make vaccine appointments, they also do phone intake, onboard and manage the growing volunteer team, develop software to manage and assign booking requests, and conduct outreach to local community groups to ensure those who need it most get our help," Rastegayeva wrote.

She said the website has helped book more than 1,000 vaccine appointments, including a 99-year-old woman, residents with no internet access and people with severe mobility restrictions who could only access one or two small vaccination sites.

Meanwhile, the state's vaccine rollout continues to be rocky. There were far fewer appointments available for people trying to schedule their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine Thursday morning, the result of short federal supply and a wave of second-shot appointments filling up the mass vaccination sites.

And the jockeying for appointments is only going to get more crowded next week.

About 12,000 appointments came online at 8 a.m., tens of thousands fewer than in previous weeks. The state announced about an hour beforehand there were no first-dose appointments available for Fenway Park, Gillette Stadium or the Reggie Lewis Center. People were encouraged to check other locations.

"As more individuals have received a first vaccine dose across the Commonwealth, there is a greater need to book second appointments, so the mass vaccination sites have fewer first dose appointments available on a weekly basis," the state's COVID-19 Command Center said Wednesday.

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