Grandson finds fix to help hundreds sign up for COVID-19 vaccine online

CALGARY (660NEWS) — Crashes and headaches for eligible Albertans trying to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine online Wednesday.

But it wasn’t so hard for one man who managed to find a temporary fix while trying to get his grandparents on the list, helping hundreds of others in the process.

“This is not the first time the Alberta government has had this happen,” said Tom Keenan, Professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape for the University of Calgary. “They brought in the system to register for camping sites and parks and it crashed right away so they should have known better.”

READ MORE: Alberta seniors trying to book COVID-19 vaccines left frustrated by website glitches

The problem appears to have been with the postal code.

“The first thing it asks you is to put in your postal code, and I assume that’s to set up the area where you’re to get the shot, closest to your home. And as soon as people were putting that in, it crashed,” said Karen Spielman who helped her mom sign up for her vaccine appointment.

A simple change to the Javascript in the browser bypassed the issue.

@korymath on Twitter then posted his fix online, leading to praise from frustrated Albertans trying to book appointments for their parents and grandparents.

SOLUTIONhttps://t.co/xZI1aHqbQB
View -> Developer -> JavaScript Console
Copy/Paste:

var sheet = document.createElement('style')
sheet.innerHTML = ".startHidden {display: block !important;} .preBooking {display: none !important;}";
document.body.appendChild(sheet);

Press Enter

— Kory Mathewson (@korymath) February 24, 2021

“Very happy that he worked it out and my mom is booked for her two, her two vaccines and we’re extremely happy,” said Spielman.

There were some questions raised about whether this method was ethical, or even legal.

READ MORE: Vaccine bookings filling up despite delays on AHS website

“In my humble opinion it wouldn’t be, because you’re not doing something to the Alberta Health Services computer. If you were messing with that, then yeah you might come under a section of the criminal code called mischief against computers, or something,” said Keenan. “In this case you’re changing something on your own machine.”

Alberta Health Services tweeted Wednesday the system has been fixed with additional queuing software in place to manage the volume of users.

Alberta Health Services has put additional queuing software in place to help manage the volume of users on the AHS COVID-19 immunization booking tool.

— Alberta Health Services (@AHS_media) February 25, 2021