By Sheldon Spackman

Growing Initiative

Edmonton women team up to help Albertans find COVID vaccination appointments

May 12, 2021 | 4:42 PM

Two Edmonton women have teamed up to help their fellow Albertans find open appointments to book their COVID-19 vaccinations.

Janaya Matheson and Sarah Mackey, initially strangers to each other, each began their efforts separately with no inclination as to where it would soon lead them.

Now known as Vax Hunters Alberta, Mackey says she and Matheson began their work the day the province announced appointments available for those aged 75 and up.

“We both booked some relatives and then quickly realized that the system was really challenging to navigate at the beginning,” she recalls. “I booked 17 people on that first day and had my parents calling all of their friends to send them over my way. And so from there, my reputation started to spread and the same thing was happening with Janaya simultaneously, unbeknownst to me.”

Mackey says it was on April 16 that Matheson noticed Vax Hunters Canada had a Twitter account, with most of its information pertaining to Ontario and little for those living elsewhere.

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“She (Janaya) really liked the set-up that they had, but it was just the sheer size of Ontario that made it really hard to use that in a helpful way for Albertans,” explains Mackey. “But then it was like, if there’s two of us, we can sort of balance the workload. So I reached out to her and asked if she wanted to work together and it’s just sort of spiraled from there.”

Now with over 10,200 followers on Twitter and over a thousand on Facebook, Mackey knows they’re making a difference.

“We get a lot of tips now which is really nice. As soon as people see an appointment or get a text from a local pharmacy or whatever, they let us know right away,” she remarks. “We also have a rotation where she and I got really fast at looping around all of the online booking sites, so we can do that pretty quickly to see where they are. Now we also have pharmacies who reach out to us directly.”

Sarah Mackey receiving her first COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo Supplied)

Mackey says they want to encourage small pharmacies without websites or online bookings to pass along their open appointment information to them.

“We’ll tell the people who need appointments, they’ll call when they know you have appointments, and then we can sort of let people know when it’s filled up,” shares Mackey.

Letting people know when they’re eligible for a vaccination is also a large part of what Vax Hunters Alberta is all about, says Mackey.

“(Ages) 50-59 feels like it’s lagging a bit in the numbers, so we’re trying to do some outreach there, and we’ve also really been trying to encourage people to reach out to their friends and family,” says Mackey.

In the weeks ahead, Mackey anticipates shifting out of helping people find appointments and towards offering more outreach-type assistance for groups having difficulty finding information.

“The food bank is one organization,” notes Mackey. “We’re going to try to work with them to see if we can get appointments set up for their clientele and other organizations like that, doing outreach with immigrant or refugee organizations and just trying to reach some of those groups that don’t have a tonne of resources to be doing the booking themselves for their communities. So we’re hoping to get more into that side of things once most people have their first shots.”