Facebook is rolling out a handful of new tools on its platforms to help people get vaccinated against Covid-19.
The tech giant, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, announced on Monday that it will use its platforms to help assist users in learning more about Covid-19 vaccines, including where and when they can get vaccinated.
"Now that many countries are moving towards vaccinations for all adults, we're working on tools to make it easier for everyone to get vaccinated as well," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in prepared remarks posted to the social media platform on Monday.
"First, we're launching a tool that shows you when and where you can get vaccinated, and gives you a link to make an appointment," Zuckerberg wrote in the post. "This will be in the Covid Information Center, which we'll show people right in their News Feed."
The Covid Information Center will also be on Instagram, where Zuckerberg said the company will "show it to people prominently there too."
The company, Zuckerberg added, is also "working with health authorities and governments to expand their WhatsApp chatbots to help people register for vaccines."
How to find Covid-19 vaccines through Facebook
To help people find vaccines, Facebook partnered with Boston Children's Hospital to launch its locator tool in the United States. The tool connects Facebook users with where to access Covid-19 vaccines in their neighborhood, hours of operation for vaccination sites, contact information and links to make an appointment.
"You should be able to search in your Facebook app -- if you type in something like 'Covid-19' or 'Covid-19 vaccine.' That will bring up the Covid-19 Information Center on Facebook, and within that there'll be a new tool where you can search to find vaccination sites near you," Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook's head of health, told CNN on Sunday.
The vaccine locator tool is similar to a blood donor feature that Facebook launched in 2019 to help users find places to donate blood in their area and be notified when a nearby blood donation center may be in need, Jin said.
"Our partners in the United States saw a 19% increase in first-time blood donors nationwide," he said. "So our hope is really to help here with the vaccine rollout."
The locations identified in the new Covid-19 vaccine finder come from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Vaccine finder, a web-based system of vaccination providers. The tool launched only in the US, but Facebook announced that it plans to expand to other countries as vaccines are available more widely, and the tool will be supported in 71 different languages.
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