booster jab pain in the butt

the black fox

the black fox

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Jeff
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No
just had my booster jab done ,what a bloody kerfuffle ..first two were AZ done at the docs in and out in less than a minute .
this one had to be the Pfizer one at a leisure centre 8 miles away . got there 15 minutes early to find a massive queue both outside and inside the place . eventually got done then had to wait 15 minutes .took in total just over a hour from arriving to leaving .no wonder youngsters are giving it the elbow . luckily while queuing there were chairs ,well two of them anyway for a couple of hundred o.a.p's..

welcome to the new normal
 
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Did you book that or was it a "walk-in" place?
 
Had all three jabs in centres, arrived five minutes early each time , but let straight in. Had the jab within a few minutes, had to wait fifteen minutes before release, as required, all went very smoothly. The booster location was organized by a chemist in a village hall. All were Phizer.
 
munch said:
Bit Melodramatic there Jeff. Just because you had to wait doesn't mean everyone is going to.
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They will round here when I left the queue was twice as long .. deeside north wales ,large catchment area and at nearly 76 I can’t stand for that long either
 
the black fox said:
just had my booster jab done ,what a bloody kerfuffle ..first two were AZ done at the docs in and out in less than a minute .
this one had to be the Pfizer one at a leisure centre 8 miles away . got there 15 minutes early to find a massive queue both outside and inside the place . eventually got done then had to wait 15 minutes .took in total just over a hour from arriving to leaving .no wonder youngsters are giving it the elbow . luckily while queuing there were chairs ,well two of them anyway for a couple of hundred o.a.p's..

welcome to the new normal
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Very similar to my own experience, although I chose to disregard the instruction to wait for 15 minutes afterwards, I'd had enough.
And there was nowhere to park, because of the length of the queue.

On the good side, all of the people working there were volunteers.
 
No queues for us, in & out in under 20 mins including a 15 minute wait in a well spaced seating area. Plenty of parking available.

We had our Pfizer booster at the same drop in centre as our 1st & 2nd AZ jabs. We received an SMS from our GP on Friday afternoon with a link to book our appointments in 10 minute slots. We were able to get an appointment for the following Tuesday, when we arrived on time we checked in at reception & were ushered straight in, jabbed and redirected to a seating area to wait for 15 mins.
 
Had my first two at my doctor's and was also in and out in a couple of minutes, tried to book my booster on-line and all options available were in a different county, even though there is a walk in centre in the same town I live in.

Just going to wait for my surgery to contact me now.
 
I'm getting mine at a pharmacy the other side of town this afternoon. I only booked it on Monday and there were quite a few choices of time so I'm hoping it won't be too busy.
 
Not had my invitation yet but I'm taking "her nextdoor" to our health centre on Saturday. IIRC, my second jab was in May so I should be getting the call soon.
 
We got the Covid booster shots and flu jab on Tuesday. Bus to the centre of Edinburgh, tram to the airport (about 12 kms), and a 15 minute walk to the vaccination centre. It was busy and there were queues but we got through in about half an hour. Straightforward.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Oh no! An hour's wait for a free injection that may just save your life?

Hope you got a cup of tea and a biscuit.
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Good point, we're spoilt in this country.
But, the government is trying to encourage people to get these jabs and it wouldn't hurt to organise the process better - especially with the booster jabs, which are currently for older people, many of which struggle to stand in a queue for a long time.
 
Perhaps I was just lucky. The last jab took about 20 mins altogether and that included the 15min wait. The first two were less than 10 minutes each.

I felt nothing when I had any of the injections and no after effects from the first two, but the booster was Pfizer and I had what fely like a bruise on my arm for a couple of days.

Dave
 
Nod said:
Not had my invitation yet but I'm taking "her nextdoor" to our health centre on Saturday. IIRC, my second jab was in May so I should be getting the call soon.
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Since that was more than 5 months ago, you should be able to book it now without waiting for an invitation, and then you'll get the earliest available date at least 6 months after the second dose (the system will know the date of your last jab):
www.nhs.uk

Book, change, or cancel a COVID-19 vaccination appointment online

Book, change or cancel a COVID-19 vaccination appointment online.
www.nhs.uk www.nhs.uk
 
I'd rather wait and have it at the health centre TBH. They're pretty good with the invitations and a hell of a lot more convenient than any of the local factory type centres! Far fewer people around too.
 
Had mine at the local chemist. 5 min wait, lots of seats.
 
I also got the AZ, first one was at the hospital, in and out within 20 mins, 2nd was at a local sports centre - queued for 1.5hrs, that was back in May and everyone in the queue was some form of health care worker, must have been every other from town got the same appointment! But hey, I thought, not so bad, all done ... now there's boosters ... Argh!!
 
My wife has been trying to book a booster, but is only getting offered distant locations (20- 30 miles away) rather than the ones much closer to us, including one of the National hubs.

I've just discovered our nearest centre (4.5 miles away)has a facebook page, and it only has limited appointments for short periods of time.

For example it is currently advertising on Facebook, posted 9th November, that 1500 appointments will be available on 17th to 19th of November, and last night it advertised a last minute availability of 500 appointments today and tomorrow.

According to the facebook page, these are the same appointments available on the national booking service and once booked, the centre stops being available in the system until they have more appointments available.

From the comments on Facebook, the appointments go very quickly, and this same intermittent availability affects other centres local to us. The only place I've found this explanation(and details of available appointments) is on the Centres Facebook page, it isn't on their website.

My wife has tried on both the 10th and 11th to try a get a local appointment, with no local sites being listed so I guess she was too late to grab one of the 1500 available on the 17th -19th (or the algorithm favoured availability over travel distance) and too early to grab one of the 500 just announced.

Now that we know what is gong on, we will just keep trying.

EDIT: it seems that the facebook post last night saying appointments would be available "this Friday and Saturday" should have said "next" Friday and Saturday (19th and 20th)
 
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Is a rant for another thread, but I tried to book an emergency appointment at a dentist this week. Waits for booster jabs are nothing :)
 
I had my booster yesterday - Moderna. It was a local pharmacy doing the service, and would have been well organised except the woman marshalling people in turn for the vaccine booths kept wandering away and so chaos ensued. Only took about 20 minutes though despite that.

I know what you mean about dentists @JonathanRyan , ours is a nightmare, I booked our checkups back in March (which were due in July) and got appointments in January (and this is a wholly private practice)
 
lindsay said:
I had my booster yesterday - Moderna. It was a local pharmacy doing the service, and would have been well organised except the woman marshalling people in turn for the vaccine booths kept wandering away and so chaos ensued. Only took about 20 minutes though despite that.

I know what you mean about dentists @JonathanRyan , ours is a nightmare, I booked our checkups back in March (which were due in July) and got appointments in January (and this is a wholly private practice)
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Some of that could be that they only have half the number of appointments due to having to leave 15 mins between patients ...
 
I got an invite to book my booster jab and had it yesterday (Sunday) morning. Appointment window was 11.20 to 11.30am. Got there about 11.10 to 11.15am and I was out by 11.23am. They said to wait 15 minute but I left straight away. They gave me Pfizer whereas my first two jabs were AZ. Arm is sore though not as bad as I remember the first jab earlier in the year. But this booster has made me really achy and tired, like flu symptoms. I've been in bed all day sleeping. Feel a bit more normal now.
.
 
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Just so that you all don’t get complacent after your booster. You can still catch COVID.
Our future DIL, a 34 year old primary school teacher is classed as clinically vulnerable so had the booster 3-4 weeks ago.
Over the weekend she developed COVID. Confirmed by the PCR test.
Likely caught it at school, lots of kids locally have had it.
 
I had to go quite a way for my injection. I could have had it only thirty metres from my home but not for an extra two weeks. I wasn't willing to wait once my turn had come so I had a day out on the motorbike. There were quite a few walk-ins so it did take me over an hour to get through the process during which I was asked my name and date of birth five times for some reason.

Anyway, it's done, even if it took a while, and I had no reaction to this one or either of the other two. Hopefully if I get COVID I will pass it off or perhaps feel a little s***ty for a couple of days but what ever happens I'm still very glad I have been able to have all three injections.
 
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Peter123 said:
Just so that you all don’t get complacent after your booster. You can still catch COVID.
Our future DIL, a 34 year old primary school teacher is classed as clinically vulnerable so had the booster 3-4 weeks ago.
Over the weekend she developed COVID. Confirmed by the PCR test.
Likely caught it at school, lots of kids locally have had it.
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Yes, I think this is one thing that wasn't made sufficiently clear at first. Like most people I used to think vaccines stopped you catching a disease. It seems that some (possibly most or even all) vaccines don't - they diminish the disease to a point where it is much less harmful to you. And with a disease that's often fatal that can literally make all the difference.

See table 1 of the ONS stats (slightly tricky because they don't show us the population of vaccinated vs unvaccinated but the right hand column is the key one)

Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics

An analysis of deaths involving COVID-19 that occurred between 2 January and 2 July 2021 in England, by vaccination status. Includes weekly age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status and a detailed analysis of deaths involving COVID-19 that occurred in...
www.ons.gov.uk
 
Merlin5 said:
I got an invite to book my booster jab and had it yesterday (Sunday) morning. Appointment window was 11.20 to 11.30am. Got there about 11.10 to 11.15am and I was out by 11.23am. They said to wait 15 minute but I left straight away. They gave me Pfizer whereas my first two jabs were AZ. Arm is sore though not as bad as I remember the first jab earlier in the year. But this booster has made me really achy and tired, like flu symptoms. I've been in bed all day sleeping. Feel a bit more normal now.
.
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Are they still using the AZ vaccine?
I've not heard of anyone having it recently even for the first vaccines.
It seems to be either Moderna of Pfuzer for the boosters, all 3 of mine have been Pfizer with no
reactions

I remember when I was taking elderly neighbours for their jabs at the end of January it was all AZ,
Pfizer seemed to be the be getting bad press at the time.
When I had mine at the beginning of March, it was Pfizer, which was still not cleared of accusations.
So what happened, I know there were reported problems with AZ but didn't realise they were bad enough to
prevent it being used
 
Gremlin said:
Are they still using the AZ vaccine?
I've not heard of anyone having it recently even for the first vaccines.
It seems to be either Moderna of Pfuzer for the boosters, all 3 of mine have been Pfizer with no
reactions

I remember when I was taking elderly neighbours for their jabs at the end of January it was all AZ,
Pfizer seemed to be the be getting bad press at the time.
When I had mine at the beginning of March, it was Pfizer, which was still not cleared of accusations.
So what happened, I know there were reported problems with AZ but didn't realise they were bad enough to
prevent it being used
Click to expand...

My brother and sister in law told me they were given the Moderna booster jab couple of days ago and she said they've stopped using AZ. I don't know why though.
 
My booster was Moderna after 2 AZ jabs earlier in the year. I had no side-effects after the first one, a really aching arm for 2 dats after the second, and a similarly act arm for about 24 hours after this booster. Nothing compared to when I used to have Yellow Fever jabs though!
 
For the first time I've felt the effects of the flu jab this year.
Felt fluey for a few days.
 
AZ will likely have been dropped because of the tiny risk of clots.
 
Various news sources seem to be indicating that Astra Zeneca don't yet have enough data regarding the vaccine's effectiveness as a booster and the JVCI appear to be reluctant to recommend it until those data are available. My own three vaccines were Pfizer although my wife has had two AZ with a Pfizer booster.
 
I had two Astra Zeneca - 14 Jan and 21 March and was given a Pfizer Booster on 14 October
 
Booked our boosters for 20th Dec. Can't get a flu vaccine round here for love or money.
 
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