A Montrealer Launched A Website That Finds Same-Day COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments

A Montreal software developer has launched a new website called Vaxstat.ca that helps Quebecers find COVID-19 vaccine appointments available the same day or the next day. 

Baptiste Laget, director of technology for the CloudRaker marketing agency in Montreal, told MTL Blog he created the site to give more visibility to Quebec's COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

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"I feel like when people realize, 'Hey, I can actually book an appointment today,' they will get vaccinated quicker, and we will be able to move down the line and get vaccinated sooner, and ease up the restrictions," Laget said.

Vaxstat has features similar to Clic Santé, Quebec's official vaccine booking website and it also uses Clic Santé data.

The key difference is that Laget's website allows users to view every Quebec vaccination site with same-day or next-day appointments all at once while Clic Santé only shows nearby available appointments within seven days. 

"I saw tweets from people thanking me because they were able to quickly find an appointment same-day through Vaxstat instead of checking all the centres on Clic Santé one by one, and that's really rewarding," said Laget.

Vaxstat also offers a map view and shows just how many spots are available within a seven-day period as well as showing appointments that were lost because they were available but not taken.

Laget said the site has had over 568,000 page views since it launched on April 5, and approximately 200,000 unique visitors, with the "Find an appointment" feature being most used by visitors.