Cloudflare to Launch Tool to Organize Digital Queues for COVID-19 Vaccine

Sieeka Khan, Tech Times 23 January 2021, 05:01 am

Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company, is now releasing a new tool that will provide a way for health organizations and health agencies that are tasked with rolling out the COVID-19 vaccines to maintain an organized, fair and transparent digital queue, and this tool is free of charge.

Cloudflare's new tool

The company's tool called Project Fair Shot will make its new Cloudflare Waiting Room offering free to any health organization that qualifies, this will provide a way from future vaccine recipients to register and to gain access to a clear and constantly-updated view of where they are in line to receive the vaccine.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that the wife of one of the executives of the company in their Austin branch was trying to register her parents for the COVID-19 vaccine program.

The registration site kept crashing and she told her husband that Cloudflare should create a queuing feature to help the sites, according to WFMJ.

Also Read: Why Older Adults Should be First in Line for COVID 19 Vaccinations, Study Explains

Prince said that it just so happens that they had exactly the same feature under development and it was scheduled to be launched in February 2021.

After realizing the need for this type of tool in order to help alleviate the numerous infrastructure challenges that come up when you are trying to vaccinate a global population against a viral threat as quickly as possible, Cloudflare adjusted their release timetable and devoted more resources to the project.

Prince added that they talked to the team about moving up the scheduled launch of their Waiting Room feature and the team worked around the clock as they recognized just how important it is to help with vaccine delivery.

These are the types of projects that drive their team, when they can use their technical expertise and infrastructure to solve problems with positive impact, according to Yahoo News.

Cloudflare Waiting Room

The Cloudflare Waiting Room is very simple to implement, according to Cloudflare, and it can be added to any registration website that is built on the existing content delivery network of the company without any engineering or any coding knowledge required.

The visitors to the site can register and they will get a confirmation that they are in line, and then they will receive a notification asking them to sign-up for the organization administering their vaccine when it is their turn.

Further configuration options allow Waiting Room operators to offer wait time estimates and give additional alerts when it is their turn.

As Prince had stated, Waiting Room was already on the project lineup of Cloudflare, and it was intended for other high-demand supply allocation items. It was suppose to be used for online shops, product releases and concert ticket. However, the Fair Shot program will give it totally free to those agencies that need it, whereas that would have been a commercial product.

All of the interested agencies can sign up at Cloudflare's registration page in order to get on the wait list for availability. Prince said that with Project Fair Shot, they stand ready to help everyone who is eligible and can get access to the vaccine.