My Covid-19 Vaccination Experience In Thailand

Mass protection from Covid-19

People who live in Thailand may chuckle at my COVID-19 vaccination experience in Thailand, whereas those who don’t may smirk. Believe me when i say that the first reaction is the one that I wish to elicit. I am very impressed with the way that my wife and I have been treated.

It all started back in about June 2021. I started asking around about vaccination against Covid 19. My wife knew nothing, and nor did our daughter. She has a good job in Bangkok, although her employer had already arranged for her to be inoculated. Neem went to see the village nurse, but there was no programme in place. A doctor in Uttaradit said that we should have had at least one dose of vaccine by then.

As far as I knew, that was the end of that. However, that doesn’t mean that nothing was going on, it is just quite normal to be kept in the dark.

My Covid-19 Vaccination Experience In Thailand

Sure enough, about a week later, at 21:00, a woman came around collecting the signatures of those who wanted a vaccination. Up until then, most people in the village had said that they did not want one.

Weeks passed by and nothing happened. Then, suddenly, Neem was told to report to a school in a town 13 km away for a Sinovacs jab the following morning. Two weeks later, I received a similar message but for 11:00 at the town hospital.

We went, but the hospital receptionist knew nothing about it. She advised us to go to the school where Neem had been, so we did that. There were about a thousand people there. Nevertheless, within about thirty minutes, we were told that foreigners were being treated in the hospital. We rushed back there, but were told that all the doses had been given out by 10:00. So, I went home a bit dejected, and unvaccinated.

About a week later, I received another urgent message. I had to be in the hospital by 08:00 the next day – in about twelve hours’ time.

Pfizer Jabs

There were about fifteen of us there for the Pfizer injection, and everything went very smoothly.

I was in the system. A week later, I received a message to return to the hospital in a fortnight’s time. We did that, but again the receptionist knew nothing about it. So, my wife went for a walk in the hospital grounds, presumably to calm down.

Anyway, twenty minutes later, she came back to hurry me to an area 200m away where I saw about a hundred school kids. We stood in line and were vaccinated within the hour. I was even given two Paracetamol tablets in case I had any side-effects.

Three months to the day after my second vaccination, we were again told to report to a location in town. This time we were given thirteen hours notice. Well, we don’t have a car, there is no bus service and no taxis in our village. We had to wait for someone to stop working, shower etc and come to our rescue. We arrived two hours late. Nevertheless, they processed us around four ‘stations’, each of which took or checked some data or other.

Thirty minutes later, we had both been ‘boosted’. We were on our way out with a complementary bottle of water each.

I want to stress that we live in a small, remote village. I know only two other Europeans within 15km of my house.

Vaccines

My wife has had Chinese Sinovacs, European AstraZeneca and American Pfizer. It seems to me to give the best protection from Covid 19 you can get! I’ve had three Pfizers.

I want to reiterate that I am very impressed with my COVID-19 vaccination experience in Thailand.

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