Northern Ontario partners get very creative and really think outside the box in order to have their clients vaccinated. Brenda Vandal works at the Foleyet Nursing Station, in northeastern Ontario. She posts vaccine info on the nursing station’s Facebook page, hangs signs around town advertising the station’s social-media channels and calls people and helps them make appointments, particularly for older people who are not tech savvy. It can take upwards of an hour to book over the phone and estimates she’s set up appointments for at least 50 people.

Volunteer team members are helping countless Manitobans who follow Vaccine Hunters Canada while they’re looking to get vaccinated. The chat room Andrew started in March has grown to more than 25,000 members today, with thousands often online at any given moment; and the Twitter feed now has well over 156,500 followers, an over 2,000 per cent growth over the 7,000 they had just two weeks ago. With the help of nearly 50 other volunteers, the team searches for information from clinics, pharmacies, and other healthcare providers to ensure it’s available right away, and presents it in an easy to understand format.

17-year-old Noah Gascon is spearheading the initiative and says the link will provide information and resources along with directing individuals to experts.

Behind the bot is Dayi Lin, a 28-year-old computer scientist who also lives in the area. His bot quickly amassed a following of a few hundred people within days of its creation and with no advertisement on Lin’s part — a testament to how residents in downtown east and west, where rates of COVID-19 are high, continue to exhaust every option available in order to secure a vaccine in the absence of a centralized, provincial booking system.