Child Vaccines
I’m going to write this blog post in two parts: the pre-January 17th part and the post-January 17th part. Why this date? The government has said the 17th is the day kids covid vaccines will start for kids ages 5-11 in New Zealand. It should be a great day, right?
Pre-January 17th
As soon as it was announced that kids vaccines would start on January 17th, I called my doctor’s office to get appointments for the kids. The (very annoyed sounding) receptionist would not make the appointment, stating that kids vaccine appointments could only be booked through the BookMyVaccine website, and that wasn’t going to start until some unknown date in the future, probably mid January, but she wasn’t sure. My impression was that I wasn’t the first person to call, and she was sick of answering these phone calls.
A few days later I called the BookMyVaccine healthline because it said to call if you wanted to book for more than one child.
As it turns out, they couldn’t make kid appointments yet, nor could they tell me when that would be possible. Since it was nearly Christmas, there was nothing to do but wait until everyone got back from the holidays and hope more information would be available soon.
On January 11th, the day when people generally return to work, we tried the doctor’s office again. Nope. Still no appointments and we needed to go through BookMyVaccine which would start making kids’ appointments on January 17th. That was a very disappointing, though typical, switch on dates. The chances of us getting a vaccine on the 17th now felt slim to none, giving us a next to impossible chance of having at least two weeks to give the vaccine a chance to work before the kids start school for the year.
In an attempt to get a little bit more information, I called the BookMyVaccine hotline again. I knew I couldn’t book an appointment, but I wanted to know which walk in clinics I could go to on the 17th and what time bookings would open on the 17th. Was it midnight? 8 am? What time did I need to try to do this? The woman answering the phone had no idea and couldn’t answer any of my questions. Neither did her supervisor.
On the 13th I decided to go to the walk in clinic where I got my booster earlier this month and ask them if they would be giving kids’ jabs on the 17th. Their answer was twofold: they weren’t quite sure what they were doing as they hadn’t received any guidance and weren’t registered as kid vaccinators and if they did do kids’ shots, it would most likely only be on Saturday. So basically, not all walk in clinics will be vaccinating kids, and good luck finding out which ones will. No one seems to know.
To say that I’m annoyed that I can’t make an appointment prior to the 17th is an understatement. I really don’t want to drive around looking for a walk in clinic for my kids on Monday, but it seems like that is the only option. For anyone who has waited in line with kids, you know how difficult this can be. I’m not looking forward to it, and “Hey guys! Let’s stand around in a line for an hour so you can get a shot!” it is going to be a tough sell. From the country that had a family line at immigration at the airport, I’d expect more.
January 17 - morning
To really talk about the morning of the 17th, I have to back up slightly to the night before at 10 pm when I checked the BookMyVaccine website in hopes that maybe they would open things a little early. The website was down for planned updates. That was a good sign - and did it mean things would open up soon?
I woke up at about 1:45 (thanks middle age and my inability to sleep through the night) and decided to check again. Nope. The website was still down for maintenance.
At 3:30 I checked again, and child vaccines were open for booking! Huzzah! There was just one small problem - there were only two vaccine centres listed within 75km of me. One, in Remuera, was only open for kid vaccines from 10-11 am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The other was 69km away in the Waikato but had plenty of appointments. I debated whether or not to grab one of those and eventually decided it would be faster to try a walk in clinic in the morning than make that drive.
At about 4:30 I checked again, and there were a couple of more centres listed for kid vaccines, including one in Albany, only 14km away. There seemed to be quite a few openings throughout the day starting at 9 am, so I decided to sit on the Albany site and see if anything else would open up. I need to reiterate at this point: prior to this moment, there was absolutely no information available on where vaccines would be available, beyond the general “they’ll be available.” There was also no information suggesting there would be a rolling reveal of vaccine centres for kids. I think everyone believed that on the 17th all of the options would be posted at once.
At 6:00, I checked again. There were a few more centres listed, but Albany was still the closest and filling up fast! I snagged two 1:00pm appointments for the kids just to be on the safe side.
At 6:45, the texts from moms starting flying. We were giving each other updates and where vaccines were available and when. Our GP finally showed up on the list around 8, but by the time I noticed, all of their spots were full until Wednesday.
To say that this was a stressful, confusing morning is an understatement. If I had known how the rolling list of vaccine clinics was going to work, perhaps I would’ve waited until I saw something closer. I’m thankful that we have an appointment, but again, with a little bit of information, planning, and communication, there would be much happier parents this morning.
January 17 - Vaccine Time!
We made the drive up to the Albany Vaccination Centre just after lunch. As we approached the facility, we were stopped by a traffic control person who quickly waved us through and told us to park right up front. The parking lot wasn’t full and there was a short line outside of perhaps five or six groups - mainly families with kids. It turned out we didn’t need to wait in that line, either, since we have appointments booked and were quickly brought inside after a quick health check.
Within five minutes we were all checked in and the kids were lost in Netflix land as we waited to get called back for the actual vaccines. The seating arrangement was a little confusing and twice we thought we were at the front of the queue only to discover another waiting room in front of us. With that being said, there were maybe ten families ahead of us when we started. Within fifteen minutes we were back with a vaccinator.
And that’s when all hell broke loose. My daughter, who was the cool, nonplussed kid going into this and volunteered to go first, all of a sudden did a 180 and turned into that screaming child. (Apologies to everyone at the Albany Vaccine Centre on Monday between 1:15 and 2:00!) Meanwhile, her big brother, who did nothing but complain and try to run away as we were going in, ended up getting his jab with minimal complaint and even helped calming her down by saying how little it hurt and how it was no big deal. Our vaccinator was a saint, perhaps too much so, and patiently waited and helped for forty five minutes before we finally pulled the rip cord and decided to leave with just one vaccinated kid. Jon and I were frayed and not doing our best parenting at that point.
Fast forward to an hour later at home after Robert and Jon had left to go do a special post-vaccine trip to the toy store (bribery at its finest, folks!) Meadow came and found me and said she wanted to go get the vaccine now. To say I was skeptical that this was a good idea is an understatement, but not one to shy away from a possible opportunity to get this done, I said we could try to get it done. Before the opportunity passed, I quickly looked up a walk in clinic nearby. The Mt. Wellington centre where I got my initial vaccines was open for another hour, so I piled her into the car and went to check out my second vaccine centre of the day.
Mt. Wellington wasn’t particularly busy either, and mostly with families getting their 5 to 11 year olds jabbed. We walked in, and the check in line was so quick I didn’t even get a chance to fill out all of the paperwork (and I say “all of the paperwork” but really it was one page) before we were signed in by the administrative staff. Again our wait was about fifteen minutes before we were called into one of the small cubicles to get her shot. This time the vaccinator worked super quickly and it was all done before she even had a chance to protest. And, as these things go, she was completely over it in about ten seconds. The vaccinator was incredibly kind and gave her an extra sticker and an activity sheet to take home. Meadow was so excited to surprise her brother and dad (who admittedly was a bit upset upon our departure from vaccine clinic #1) and show them how brave she was.
It was a stressful day for a lot of reasons, but the actual process of getting the vaccine was really smooth. I was anticipating crazy waits and a huge rush, and while a lot of kids were out getting vaccinate - apparently over 14,000 kids got jabbed in one day, almost 3% of newly eligible 5 to 11 year olds - there was plenty of supply to meet the demand. And I can say this pretty confidently as I visited two clinics on opposite sides of town. Everything ran relatively well. In retrospect, I think I was acting too much like an American on this one. A Kiwi approach of “she’ll be right” would’ve worked a lot better.
