Meet Dr. B: This New Website Sends Alert on Leftover COVID-19 Vaccines
Are you looking for a leftover COVID-19 vaccine? This new Dr. B website could help match you with a clinic that could dispense extra shots before they expire.
Despite the COVID-19 vaccine rollout of the federal government, COVID-19 shots are still in high demand. Thus, a lot of people are eager to get a vaccine by quick action or good fortune.
Even though only certain people are eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine right now, some have managed to get a shot in clinics with leftover doses at risk of expiring. Providers themselves rush to give out the extra shots if someone cancels or does not show up.
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Dr. B Website
According to The Verge, over half a million people already signed up with Dr. B in an attempt to snag a dose while reducing the number of COVID vaccines that would otherwise go to waste.
Dr. B aims to function as a kind of emergency alert system for thawed COVID-19 vaccines that usually need to be injected within six hours.
According to Insider, Dr. B would send a text message to whoever is at the top of the area's priority list once there's an extra COVID-19 vaccine at a site near them.
To join, a person will have to enter his/her name, age, phone number, ZIP code, and other details that your local health department might ask to determine your priority status, like medical risk factors and occupation.
After receiving a text, individuals have 15 minutes to confirm if they could get to the provider in two hours to get to their shot. If a person could not make it, he/she will go back to the line within their priority group.
Dr. B Website and Excess COVID-19 Vaccines
Cyrus Massoumi, the website's founder, told USA Today that Dr. B aims to address the need for "appropriate tools in dealing with the operational challenges of vaccinating the whole country."
Massoumi further noted that Dr. B only connects people with expiring COVID-19 vaccines and not finding available vaccine appointments.
Currently, Dr. B website helps individuals get vaccines through two providers in Arkansas and New York. Massoumi said it would have 200 vaccination sites across 30 states utilizing the tool in the coming weeks.
"This vaccine is now the scarcest resource on earth... We were concerned about the fact that a lot of the vaccine ends up in this last-minute shuffle at the end of the day," said Massoumi in the Verge report.
Massoumi was the former CEO of Zocdoc, the online doctor's appointment booking website.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar from John Hopkins Center for Health Security, commended the Dr. B website, saying it serves an important role in the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Adalja told USA Today that having websites like Dr. B was good since it would "diminish the chances" that COVID-19 vaccines will ever end up in the trash.
READ MORE: Moderna's COVID Vaccine for New Variant, Ready for Clinical Trials
WATCH: Frustration Grows Over Nationwide COVID-19 Vaccine Shortage - from TODAY
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