Google LLC today announced a number of new initiatives focused on getting as many people as possible vaccinated in the U.S. and around the world.

These initiatives include grants and direct funding for local communities to get vaccines where they’re needed most and a Google Cloud contact center artificial intelligence solution designed to help governments scale vaccine rollouts.

Grants and direct funding for more vaccinations

Google.org joined forces with Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, a global health partnership of public and private agencies dedicated to increasing access to immunization in poor countries, beginning with funds for 250,000 vaccinations along with technical assistance to accelerate their work.

Gavi has been educating communities about COVID-19 vaccines as part of outreach campaigns. Google is now committing $15 million in ad grants to help Gavi build on these continuing efforts and amplify fundraising campaigns.

Vaccine rates can vary by geography and community and community-based organizations are key to getting them distributed due to on-the-ground expertise and the trust of the people they serve. As a result, Google.org is allocating $2.5 million in grant funding to Partners in Health, Stop the Spread and Team Rubicon.

These organizations are working directly with more than 500 community-based organizations to serve Black, Latino and rural communities to build efforts such as no-appointment pop-up vaccination clinics.

To help hard-hit communities in Miami, Chicago, Houston, New York City and Los Angeles, Google is working with UnidosUS, the largest Latino nonprofit advocacy organization in the U.S., to inform government local governments on how to update their public service announcements to better serve bilingual communities.

In the interest of expanding this work, and the local cultural knowledge brought by UnidosUS, Google is committing an additional $250 million in ad grants to governments, community and public health organizations, including the World Health Organization.

This will bring the total commitment for COVID-related public service announcements to more than $800 million.

Google Cloud AI now assisting local communities

Today Google Cloud announced an expansion of its Intelligent Vaccine Impact program, which works with state governments and public health leaders to introduce cloud-based communications and artificial intelligence capabilities as part of vaccine registration.

The new updates provide Contact Center AI, a core component of IVI that scales up call centers by coupling human operators with intelligent virtual agents that can understand and interact with people in real time.

Most important, CCAI is available on almost any platform and can be reached through chat, text, web, mobile and phone. The intelligent agents work conversationally and can assist with answering questions, registration, scheduling and follow-up reminders. Virtual agents can also direct to local resources, provide guidance and locate vaccination sites.

Multilingual virtual agents exist as well to provide assistance for people who are more comfortable speaking in languages other than English, both online and over the phone.

Built on Google Cloud’s Conversational AI, CCAI is capable of understanding the context of questions and providing a human-like experience. The virtual agent needs to be able to comprehend how people talk and the multiple ways that people express their needs and intent in order to understand language.

Even simple differences in a sentence can matter. For example, “When can I get the vaccine?” and “When can I get it?” are essentially the same question. With CCAI, the virtual agent can understand the context of the question to answer it.

Virtual agents are a way to take pressure off human call centers because they can be updated quickly from databases with real-time authoritative information. That also means they can take more calls and reduce wait times.

CCAI can also be extended to go beyond questions and answers, to provide the ability to register and schedule appointments. Because virtual agents can take action on behalf of the person calling in, CCAI can be used to locate a nearby vaccination center, acknowledge eligibility, schedule an appointment and set up a reminder call — all during the same session.

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