Tips for scoring a Massachusetts coronavirus vaccine appointment as 50,000 new appointments go live today - Boston Herald

The mad dash to score a vaccine appointment will once again test the state’s webmasters Thursday.

Another 50,000 new appointments are expected to go live, one week after the state’s vaxfinder site flopped for people 65-plus and those with two specific comorbidities.

Those new appointments will be at the state’s mass vax sites in Foxboro, Boston, Springfield, Natick, Danvers and Dartmouth.

Gov. Charlie Baker promised the signup website will be prepared for a “surge in traffic” as the appointments go live. The governor said the state has “bolstered server capacity” and taken other steps — including creating a digital waiting room — to ensure the site won’t get overwhelmed like it did at 8 a.m. last Thursday.

The digital waiting room will queue users online during high-traffic periods, where they’ll wait for entry to the page where they can actually book an appointment — but won’t be bounced out during the process. State officials promise this go-around will be better than last week.

Here are some tips that could help those in the eligible vax population score an appointment:

• The state website that shows the different mass vax sites is vaxfinder.mass.gov. But when that site crashed last week, many residents scored open appointments by going directly to a third-party provider website, such as Curative, which runs the mass vax sites in Danvers, Springfield and Dartmouth. People can simultaneously refresh both the state website and the third-party site to see if new appointments become available.
• A Somerville software engineer has created a Twitter account that immediately alerts people when new slots go live. The bot account, @vaccinetime, tweets out the specific vax site and the number of new available slots when they are uploaded to the vax website. The account includes the direct link to sign up for an appointment. One key tip is to enable Twitter notifications, so users are immediately alerted about the new slots.
• An Arlington software developer built an online vaccination platform, where people can clearly see which vax providers have open slots. The site has the direct links to sign up. That website is macovidvaccines.com.
• Have all your vital information ready, including your name, age, address and insurance information. The coronavirus vaccine is technically free, but Gov. Charlie Baker said the state is still looking for health insurance companies to help pay.

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