Earlier this week, President Joe Biden moved up the target date to open vaccines for all adults to April 19 — two weeks earlier than previously expected.
The White House is telling older Americans to get vaccinated now, as appointments will likely get harder to find when all adults are eligible.
Biden has promised to have a vaccination site within five miles of where every American lives, meaning more sites will be opening in the days and weeks ahead.
“Most sites are in desperate need of volunteers, just like you and me,” said Sharon Leslie, the creator of VaxVolunteers.
Leslie is a rehabilitation specialist who works with cancer patients. She’s been researching vaccination sites that needs volunteers, and launched VaxVolunteers so people can sign up to help with everything from parking to greeting, paperwork and even inoculations at vaccine sites across the country.
“There are some sites that are pop-up, so they don't know they're going to get supply until the week before,” Leslie said. “Then, they know they need, like, 100 volunteers so. Some of it happens quite quickly and some of it is a more predictable supply, like a mass distribution site of the stadium that they know what volunteers they're going to need.”
VaxVolunteers is a simple website to navigate and allows users to search both medical and non-medical roles at vaccination sites in the area. Anyone 18 and older is eligible to volunteer.
“People know that even the smallest contribution that they can make goes a long way and that's going to go a long way to help us be able to hug our loved ones again and to get the majority of our country vaccinated,” she said. “To me that's one of the most important things we can do.”
VaxVolunteers is also crowd sourcing vaccine sites to add to their website. To add to the list or to volunteer in person, click here.