Appointments for the Covid-19 vaccine may begin booking in South Africa in mid-May. There is an option within the application process to enter a passport number as opposed to a South Africa ID number indicating that foreign nationals over age 60 will qualify for this second rollout after health care workers and emergency services workers have been vaccinated.
If you are currently in South Africa, including foreign nationals over 60 years old, you may register at this link. You will be notified by text message to confirm your registration within 24 hours of applying and then be informed where and when you may go for the vaccine, hopefully sometime next month.
Currently, we have two passports each, one expiring at the end of August and another expiring in 2024. To be safe and to ensure our vaccination certificates have the correct passport numbers we used the numbers of the latter of the two.
With a degree of uncertainty of sufficient doses available in South Africa, the uncertainly of the efficacy and various side effects, we hesitated, but for only a moment. If we want to continue traveling the world, we must get the vaccine. Even, if for some reason, we decided to stop traveling, we’d still need the vaccine if we ever wanted to cruise again or feel safe in the USA. The pandemic is not going away anytime soon.
There has been a lot of controversy as to if and when South Africa will have sufficient doses for the vaccine and according to news reports (could be fake news), it’s still up in the air. But, from what we hear, they are almost done with health care workers. There are 50 million people in South Africa.
Some may say that our being vaccinated while in South Africa is taking away an opportunity for South African citizens. But, wherever we’d be in the world, we’d be using up two doses. I suppose wherever one was located at the time of receiving the vaccine could elicit a case for objection by some.
That same “hater” we mentioned in yesterday’s post here, berated us at the prospect of us returning to the US to get vaccinated since we’ve been gone so long, saying we aren’t entitled. Every human on the planet is entitled to receive the vaccine not only for their own benefit but hopefully the benefit of loved ones and others, with whom they may be in contact.
If you are in South Africa and choose to register for the vaccine, please keep in mind that it may take some time for the drop-down filters to load. I waited for 10 minutes to be able to select this municipality. I left it sitting while I did a few other tasks and when I returned to my computer the selections were available.
It’s best to plan that it will take about 20 minutes to complete the form for each individual, only due to the slow response time when attempting to enter the simple information into the drop-down menus. It’s one of those scenarios when patience prevails which is often the case when filling out certain online forms.
Today is cooler and cloudier than yesterday and a bit breezy. Sitting outdoors on the veranda feels especially comfortable. The visitors are stopping by on a consistent basis, especially large numbers of bushbucks. As it’s turned out, due to lack of recent rain, the vegetation for the wildlife is becoming sparse and they are hungry.
We currently have four 40 kg bags (88 pounds each) of pellets right now and don’t hesitate to offer pellets freely which we’ll happily do during the lean times in the upcoming winter. Before our eyes, the bush is rapidly losing leaves and already we can see well into the bush which was obstructed by lush vegetation only a few short weeks ago.
We’ll be posting today’s story on Facebook today, especially on Marloth Park pages for those who may not be aware of the availability of registration for the vaccine. There are many residents over 60 residing in Marloth Park.
Have a pleasant day. Be well.
Photo from one year ago today, April 16, 2020:
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| The setting sun between the palm trees in Kauai in 2015. For more photos from this post six years ago today, please click here. For the year-ago post, please click here. |