Facebook announced that it is launching a tool that will show “when and where you can be vaccinated” for COVID-19 and will provide a link to help you make an appointment. The new feature will be displayed at its COVID-19 Information Center and will arrive when the United States and other countries start vaccinating adults. The goal is “to help bring 50 million people closer to obtaining the COVID-19 vaccines”, according to a post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
To create the tool, Facebook partnered with Boston Children’s Hospital, which runs the website VaccineFinder.org. This tool – available at the COVID-19 Information Center as of today – will provide opening hours, contact information and links to schedule vaccinations. It will be supported in 71 different languages, and Facebook plans to expand it to other countries as soon as vaccines are more widely available.
Facebook also revealed that it will bring the COVID-19 Information Center to Instagram and “will show it prominently there as well.” As with the Facebook portal, the tool will display the latest virus information from local governments and the World Health Organization (WHO), according to the Instagram Blog. You’ll also see new stickers on Instagram Stories, “so that people can inspire others to get vaccinated when it’s available to them,” said Facebook.
First, we are launching a tool that shows you when and where you can be vaccinated and provides a link to make an appointment. This will be in the Covid Information Center, which we will show people directly in your News Feed. We’ve seen people use Facebook to find vaccination schedules, so that should allow millions of people to do the same.
Facebook is also working with medical authorities on WhatsApp chatbots in an effort to help people register for vaccines. “More than 3 billion messages related to Covid have already been sent by governments, non-profit organizations and international organizations to citizens through official WhatsApp chatbots, so this update will also help with the vaccination effort,” wrote Zuckerberg.
Finally, Facebook revealed plans to make vaccination trends, such as the intention to be vaccinated and reasons for hesitation, available to public officials “to inform the equitable distribution of the vaccine”. It is also releasing data and insights into vaccine attitudes on its map and COVID-19 panel, available on Facebook’s “Data for Good” panel. In the meantime, journalists, aid organizations and public officials will be able to track how information about vaccines is disseminated on social media through CrowdTangle’s COVID-19 Live Displays.
USA today noted that about 21 percent of people in the U.S. received at least one COVID-19 vaccine and 11 percent are fully vaccinated. US President Joe Biden recently unveiled an ambitious plan to inoculate the rest of the US population in time for the 4th of July Independence Day celebrations. Some of the new Facebook tools and vaccination consultation links can help in this regard, especially for people who get most of the information from the site.