Democratic mayoral candidate Andrew Yang announced Tuesday he will award a key to the city to Huge Ma, creator of the TurboVax website, for solving a critical failure in New York’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Ma’s platform streamlined the process of finding available vaccination appointments—a task city and state systems struggled with—by aggregating real-time data and alerting users via Twitter.
“The fact that Huge took it upon himself to address this challenge embodies the best of New York,” Yang said, praising Ma’s proactive approach rather than mere criticism. He lightheartedly offered Ma a role in his potential administration, joking, “I don’t know if we can pay as well as Airbnb, but you’ll be helping a whole lot of people.”
Ma, an Airbnb software engineer and Manhattan resident, built TurboVax after enduring the disjointed city and state booking systems, which lacked alerts for new appointment slots. His automated solution swiftly gained traction, amassing over 170,000 Twitter followers and earning acclaim from figures like Saturday Night Live‘s Bowen Yang and New York Magazine.
At the recognition event alongside Congressman Ritchie Torres, Ma expressed humility: “I just wanted to make the vaccine process simpler. I never expected it would help hundreds of thousands get vaccinated.” His work earned him profiles praising the ingenuity that outpaced official efforts during the vaccination crunch.
Photos by Robert Miller