Teens Put Tech Skills To Use Booking Vaccination Appointments For Seniors

In some areas, vaccine doses are plentiful; in others, they're in short supply. And that's where kids like Benjamin Kagan come in. Kagan, 15, simply wanted to connect his own grandparents with a vaccine, so he set up an appointment for them online.

But after seeing a local news feature about a Facebook group set up by people in his hometown of Chicago trying to find vaccinations, he decided to help them as well.

"I figured, OK, well, all these people need help and some of them aren't good at using technology — that's an issue that we face a lot with some of the older people in the group," Kagan told Today.

But he has been inundated with requests —his Facebook group swelled to more than 24,000 members by early March, The Washington Post reported — and Kagan has since recruited dozens of volunteers to help manage it all.

Sometimes, making appointments has required Kagan to log on just before midnight — when a new day's registration begins — to try to get a stranger a spot in line. Sometimes, he's been contacted near the end of the day when vaccine supplies are in danger of going to waste.

One nurse contacted Kagan, saying "'Benjamin, I just spoke with my supervisor. We have 10 extra vaccine doses, like, get the people here immediately,'" he told Today.

So far, he and his group have helped over 1,000 people get vaccinated, he told Good Morning America.

Sam Keusch, 12, built a website specifically for that purpose, VaccineHelper.com. Inspired by his parents' efforts to help seniors book their appointments, Keusch took on the website as a Bar Mitzvah project.

"The appointment websites flicker with new appointments periodically, and they often last several seconds before they are claimed, at which point they state there are no appointments. If you're fast enough, and persistent enough, you can get the appointment," he explains on the site. "I think of it like a video game and try to be the first to get it. So I can't guarantee that you will get an appointment, but I will do everything I can to get it."

One of his first appointments was for a neighbor who survived the Holocaust, and for whom the vaccine allowed to start chemotherapy. She told her friends and Keusch helped them get appointments, too.

"None of them knew how to go through the system with the government," she told News 12. "I still get phone calls thanking me because they had the shot because Sam helped them."

So far, VaccineHelper.com has helped book 2,735 appointments, according to the website.

Both find it rewarding to be able to use their tech skills to help out. "I've had people tell me that they finally get to see their grandchildren for the first time. And that's amazing, because not being able to see your grandchildren is tough," Keusch told CBS News.

And so, the work will continue as long as it has to. "Until everyone in this country is vaccinated, or can easily access a vaccine by calling a pharmacy or going online, I'm going to continue doing this," Kagan told Today.

"I will be doing this until the demand goes down. [...] But if it doesn't, then I'll keep on doing this," Keusch echoed to Good Morning America.

h/t: Good Morning America, Today