Google Search, Maps, Assistant Will Now Provide COVID-19 Vaccine Availability, Doses, Cost Details in India

Google Search, Maps, and Assistant will now show helpful information about COVID-19 vaccine availability in India. Since March, Google has been showing COVID-19 vaccination centres in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Now, Google Maps and Google Assistant will also be able to help people get information like availability of slots, expected pricing, dosage information, and more. This will help people easily access the information without logging in to the CoWIN platform and get vaccinated at the earliest.

Google has shared that when people search for vaccine centres either on Google Search, Maps, or with the voice assistant, more detailed information will now be available to them. They will get to know the availability of COVID-19 vaccine slots at each centre, the doses offered at the centre, whether the vaccine is paid or free, as well as a link to CoWIN website for booking. Indian users will be able to search in eight languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, along with English.

Google says that it is taking real-time data from the CoWIN APIs and will continue to work closely with the CoWIN team to add more vaccination centres to its database across India.

Hema Budaraju, Director, Google Search said, “As people continue to seek information related to the pandemic to manage their lives around it, we remain committed to finding and sharing authoritative and timely information across our platforms.”

Last week, at its virtual ‘Google for India' event, the search giant launched an updated Google Safety Centre in eight Indian languages and introduced an online safety-focussed programme called ‘Be Internet Awesome' for children. The updated Google Safety Centre is a single destination dedicated to educating users about digital safety to help them secure their accounts. Likewise, the ‘Be Internet Awesome' programme was launched in English and Hindi to help children, families, and educators in India learn the basics of online safety.