Beverly Sisters Launch MA Coronavirus Vaccine Finder Site

BEVERLY, MA — When three Beverly sisters who all attended Harvard University put their minds together there is no telling what they might accomplish.

When the impetus for that sibling collaboration was their mother's quest for a coronavirus vaccine, the Gabrieli sisters of Beverly Farms created a website that will now benefit residents throughout the state for the duration of the unprecedented mass vaccination effort.

Lilla, Polly and Abigail Gabrieli were all thrilled when they found out their mother was eligible for the vaccine in Phase 2 of the state's rollout two weeks ago. As someone with two underlying health conditions, their mother had been in what the sisters called a "strict lockdown" for nearly a full year. As a very close family, the sisters had to be similarly cautious if they wanted to be together in the same house.

"It was such a sigh of relief when our mom became eligible," Lilla said. "I mean we really celebrated it. Then it came time to sign up for an appointment and I spent the whole day refreshing (the state website). I felt there had to be an easier way where this wasn't a full-time job."

So Lilla, a 23-year-old Harvard graduate who is studying social data science remotely for her master's degree at Oxford University amid the pandemic, went to work designing a computer program that streamlines the exhausting refreshing process.

"We were all incredibly excited but all very quickly discouraged," Abigail, the eldest sibling at 26 years old, said their mother's eligibility. "Lilla kept texting me the entire day. Then finally she said she'd done it. I could barely believe it I was so excited.

"Then my sister tells me she's figured something out to help other people. I was going to Facebook a few friends with parents who are eligible. But then she said: 'I think we're bigger than that.'

"'I am thinking of taking it to everyone.'"

What Lilla figured out was her "Mass COVID Vaccine Finder" website that scans the state for appointments and sends out alerts to subscribers.

"You shouldn't have to sit on your computer and keep checking something," Lilla determined. "You shouldn't have to keep refreshing something. Everyone has their email with them all the time so why don't we create something where we just pin you when something opens up? It lets you know within a minute of the appointment becoming available.

"It's really an efficient way for people eligible to live their lives and be able to know when a vaccine appointment opens up so they can be one of the first to sign up."

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The sisters quickly joined forces to augment Lilla's creation. Polly, a 24-year-old Harvard graduate student studying bioinformatics, scaled the code so it could email thousands of people a day, while Abigail, a policy and social coordinator for the MassEquality organization that works to ensure education and equal rights for the LGBT community, designed a website that is both informational and highly intuitive.

"Then it started blowing up overnight," Lilla said. "One of the most remarkable moments is seeing the traffic that it started to get. You had people from Beverly we knew, but then people from Boston, Pittsfield, Danvers, Roxbury.

"One of the coolest parts of this experience is connecting with people I didn't know of, I've never met, will never meet, but knowing we are united in this struggle to get the people we love vaccinated."

While Lilla highlights the contribution from all three sisters — all of whom went to the Winsor School in Boston — Abigail and Polly are quick to credit Lilla as the project's brainchild.

"I've been so impressed with Lilla," Polly said. "She has totally blossomed. She built the entire program from the ground up all from a place of just really wanting to help people."

There is a donation button on the website that Lilla said will help the sisters cover costs as they continue to grow the site up to meet the expected demand as more and more groups become vaccine-eligible. She said she hopes to soon include features that narrow geographical searches and send text alerts as well as email alerts.

She plans on making updates throughout the spring and into the summer, if necessary.

"We want to make this as simple and easy as possible," Lilla said. "If we're no longer needed, we think that's a good thing.

"That means everyone is vaccinated."

She said anyone in the state is invited to sign up but asks that those who get an appointment unsubscribe so the site can keep sending the email alerts without maxing out its capability.

"We're really happy you got an appointment but we don't need you getting pinged every day once you're vaccinated," she requested.

Knowing what it meant to the sisters that their mother was vaccinated makes it all the more gratifying to have a role in helping other families experience that sense of renewed reassurance and hope after nearly a whole year of anxiety and fear.

"One of the most rewarding things has been to hear from users," Lilla said. "'Thank you so much. This helped me get an appointment for my grandmother. This helped me get an appointment for my dad.'

"And it was literally launched out of the living room of our house."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)