This Girl Is (finally) on Pfizer and Travelling in Covid Times

Vaccination, somehow a very controversial topic nowadays but in my eyes definitely a necessary step towards some type of normality. In this article, I aim to only share my opinion and experience with getting my vaccine in London while living and studying here and also my point of view on travelling, something that used to be so easy and we all took it for granted.

Photo by Eva Darron on Unsplash

First of all, I would like to describe my wait for the vaccine. UK was one of the countries that started their vaccination plan relatively early. It was only a matter of time before people who are 18+ would be allowed to get their jabs. The day when that was announced I rushed to the NHS booking server to get mine as soon as humanly possible. Quite frankly, I was sick of lockdowns, restrictions, depressing news reading every day and not seeing my family as often. Every time I thought about going back to the Czech Republic for a couple of days, I started researching the criteria for entering Czech Republic, then for leaving the UK and returning which was all very overwhelming because it was also changing constantly (and still is). When I started calculating how much money I’d have to give just to get my PCR tests, I soon realised it was quite hopeless. And I know I am not the only person in this boat. Especially all the foreign students who stayed to work after the term, they relied on the job but couldn’t make enough money to pay for testing and then be able to skip that many days at work because of self-isolation.

Which leads me to the time when I booked my Covid-19 vaccination for the first time. However, just few days before the booked date, my roommate unfortunately started to feel unwell. It was fairly suspicious considering London is a huge city and the daily cases were rising. He did test positive which meant self-isolation for both of us. Expectedly not long after, I tested positive too. Luckily, my body handled it well because I am still young and healthy. The issue was that I had to cancel my vaccination and contact my GP to find out how long I need to actually wait to get it done.

After recovering and waiting and waiting some more, I was able to get my first dose at the end of July.

Few weeks later in August I had a flight booked to go see my family to celebrate all the birthdays we missed. That was roughly around the time when they stopped accepting only first dose of the vaccine because of Delta variant, which meant a lot of extra worry. Fortunately for me, Czech Republic was accepting of people who have had Covid recently and recovered which meant I didn’t need to do pre-departure test nor the test after arriving. Unfortunately, UK has left the European Union. And while many people may shrug at this and think ‘Why is that relevant here?’, let me explain. I spent hours trying to work out exactly what type of paper I needed as a proof of that since I tested positive in the UK, therefore not part of the EU and their vaccination and testing online server. In the end, I needed to contact Czech embassy in the UK for them to give me a document with a stamp on it which allowed me to travel without needing to get the tests done.

When returning back to the UK, I needed to get my day 2 & 8 PCR tests done, plus I wanted to do day 5 test to release as well because that meant I could’ve stayed longer in Czech Republic that way without begin away from my part-time job for too long. Long story short, I stumbled upon some trouble because to this day I haven’t received my test results from day 5. Luckily, I got a refund but it still put me in an awkward situation because I couldn’t end my self-isolation early as intended.

Photo by Marisol Benitez on Unsplash

This crazy story continues on the 20th of September, the date I had my second dose of vaccination booked. I took 2 days off from work just in case I wouldn’t feel well and headed out to the Rugby stadium which was the same place I got my first dose done. It is a bit of a walk from where I lived but I think overall a bit more movement is something I need in my life. However, I got upset when I arrived there and they just casually informed me that the vaccination centre was closed that day. This to me makes no sense as I got no notification that I need to rebook my appointment. Therefore, I was quite frustrated at that point and in the end I ended up goingo into the walk-in centre instead because quite frankly I lost my patience with the NHS booking system.

I am writing this, and in this exact moment my arm is sore from the second dose, so hopefully a bright future of easier travelling is ahead of me. Now we just have to hope for no more lockdowns.