You Can Soon Book COVID-19 Vaccination Slots Via Google Assistant

Last Updated on November 23, 2021 by Asif Iqbal Shaik

At the recently conducted ‘Google for India’ virtual event, Google announced that it is making it easier for people in India to book COVID-19 vaccination slots. The company is enabling booking COVID-19 vaccination slot on the CoWIN portal via Google Assistant. Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice-President of Google, announced a pilot of the first-ever Google Assistant-enabled end-to-end vaccine booking flow in India. You will be able to utilise the service from early 2022 to get vaccinated and stay safe from the novel coronavirus.

Getting COVID-19 vaccination slots could be intimidating for some who aren’t well versed with technology, and it is even harder for people who are unable to read. Google is working towards minimising the complexities involved in the process by implementing speech recognition and language understanding techniques to provide information to users in an easier way.

Google says Indian consumers use voice queries almost double when compared to global users. Google is hopeful that integrating CoWIN with Google Assistant could help speed up the vaccination drive in India. The service will be available in multiple languages including English and eight Indian languages Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. 

Recently, even Facebook-owned instant messaging service Whatsapp partnered with the Health Ministry of India to launch a similar service on its portal.

How To Book Covid Vaccine On Google Assistant

Follow the steps below to book a vaccination slot for yourself or your loved ones:

1. Go to Google Search on your smartphone and type or just say “COVID Vaccine” or “COVID-19 Vaccine”.
2. Now, tap on ‘Register Easily With Google Assistant’.
3. Select your preferred language. 
4. The Google Assistant will then ask you to enter the name of the beneficiary, 12-digit Aadhaar Card Number, and the birth year (in YYYY format).
5. Now, select the vaccination slot by entering your area’s pin code and selecting the district. 
6. You can set filters such as age, cost, and categories vaccines during this step.
7. Select your preferred date and time to receive the vaccination. 
8. You will get an SMS from the CoWIN portal on your registered number with all the details that are required for the COVID-19 vaccination.