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When is my turn?
A corona vaccination appointment calculator provides an estimate
Photo: FreshSplash / Getty Images
Germany is currently exercising patience.
Since the beginning of the year, the vaccinations against the coronavirus have been the great hope in the pandemic.
But the vaccine is not yet available to everyone, and the entire population can hardly be vaccinated against the virus at once - they have to queue up according to priority.
That is why people who want to be vaccinated are currently asking themselves: When is my turn?
Bogna Szyk was also concerned with the question.
That is why the engineer from the Technical University of Vienna developed a corona vaccination date calculator together with her colleague Philip Maus.
The tool provides the user with an indication of when the two vaccinations, which for the Biontech vaccine have to be administered every three weeks, for example, will be carried out.
It also shows how many people are likely to be vaccinated before one.
The Polish start-up Omni Calculator, for which the two work, originally developed a corresponding calculator for Great Britain.
"We found out that the date is simply of interest to many people," Szyk told SPIEGEL.
The vaccination appointment calculator is easy to use (you can access the tool here).
It takes into account the priorities that the Federal Ministry of Health created on the recommendation of the Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO).
The users enter age, occupation or previous illnesses, among other things, at the end the computer spits out a period in which the vaccinations are expected to take place.
However, this period is generous.
In the case of the author of this text, the first calculated vaccination date was in a range of six months.
"Of course, our result is only an estimate," says Szyk.
The vaccination date depends on a number of factors, which the calculator tries to take into account.
To do this, it is adjusted when there are new data and, for example, a new vaccine is approved that promises German patients an increase in doses.
"We try to keep the computer up to date and to supply it with the data from the Robert Koch Institute," says Szyk.
The system currently assumes 670,000 vaccination doses per week, a figure that the Federal Ministry of Health published as a target.
But in fact, the vaccination rate monitoring by the Robert Koch Institute shows a much lower value.
In the seven days from January 6 to 12, only around 382,800 people were vaccinated.
After all, the value can be adjusted manually for personal calculations.
And the willingness to vaccinate in the population, for which the computer provides the current data from the Cosmo survey of the University of Erfurt as a reference value, is also taken into account.
Because these values also fluctuate, this variable can also be adjusted.
But just like the current weekly vaccination doses, they require a little research from the user.
Researchers working with Alexander Zipf, Professor of Geoinformatics at the University of Heidelberg, want to make it easier for citizens to organize vaccinations.
Zipf and his team have developed a useful tool: a map that shows users the nearest vaccination center.
The web app works similarly to navigation software.
You just enter your place of residence.
The application then searches the interactive map for the vaccination center that is responsible for the users.
A route description is also displayed.
The tool should be continuously updated.
So far there is still one inaccuracy: the map does not yet take into account the different responsibilities of the vaccination centers at the borders of federal states.
Card with bed occupancy
Researchers also want to help where there is overload.
The team around Daniel Keim, professor for data analysis at the University of Konstanz, has put together a map from data on hospital occupancy that shows the availability of intensive care beds in clinics.
In this way, users can see not only in which regions the situation is currently critical, but also where there is a risk of overload.
There are some tabs on the left side of the map (this is where you get to the tool).
The number of cases can also be followed very precisely here.
The districts not only show the seven-day incidences, but also, for example, so-called heatmaps, which make a breakdown by age group visible.
If you switch off the case view and go to the tab »Hospitals - bed occupancy«, the bed occupancy can be displayed using the switch »Glyph«.
However, current values are not available for all clinics.
The data comes from the Divi Intensive Care Register, which has been publishing the development of hospital occupancy in daily reports since April.
Around 1,300 clinics regularly report their occupancy to the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi).
If all beds are occupied, the register for the hospital shows red.
If the capacity is almost reached, yellow.
Where there are enough beds, it shows green.
The map of the researchers from Constance also follows this traffic light scheme.
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An app shows the radius of movement around a city
Photo: Rouven Meidlinger
When the federal and state governments recently decided that people in counties with a seven-day incidence of over 200 were only allowed to stay 15 kilometers from their place of residence, many people asked themselves how far their range of motion should now extend.
There were various map tools, but most of them only showed a circular area that drew a 15-kilometer radius around the entered address.
The lockdown rule only applies from the city limits.
Cities are not circular geometrical constructs.
Therefore the range of motion varies.
The geographic information expert Rouven Meidlinger has a solution for this.
He developed the app “Radius of Movement Germany”, which can display the corresponding areas for all cities and municipalities.
If desired, the current location can be displayed on the map via GPS.
The color of the marker shows directly whether you are inside or outside the permitted area.
The app is free, without advertising, and available for iOS and Android.
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