It takes a village

We had doubted we’d be able to do it in the short time we had. The Schengen visa for the European Union, and the vaccine documentation for international travel posed the first challenges. Surprisingly, the latter proved more challenging.

This cruise had been put off for two years due to the pandemic, and this was our last chance to take it or forfeit our deposit, not to mention the bonus gifts for early booking. But it wasn’t just about that. It was as good an M.D.’s prescription for our well-being. Besides, with seniors, it could be now or never.

Preparing

Admittedly, we had been rather late making up our minds. My health issues obviously took priority. I had had two stents planted in me only in March, and my earlier-set cataract removal had had to be postponed itself in favor of my angioplasty. Cleared now for both trip and eye procedure, the choice of priority was easy. I was going to sea at 82.

We just didn’t realize how much work it would take preparing. European countries require of a Filipino traveler proof of two anti-COVID vaccines and at least one booster from the Department of Health, not just from the government of the locality where he or she got it. And our liner and most of the countries on our itinerary did not recognize Sinovac. Providentially, not so trustful ourselves, we had also taken two full doses of the acceptable Moderna and a booster of Pfizer.

That was simple and straightforward enough, but trust our own official system, or lack of it, to demand more, redundantly, of its own foreign-bound citizens: two documents certifying to the same thing—a VaxCert.PH virtual card from the health department database and a yellow booklet from the Bureau of Quarantine, which required one’s physical presence to prove one’s worthiness of the physical booklet.

Most people I know ended up having five—as we ourselves had—or six vaccinations. We had ordered Moderna vaccines through a private company when it wasn’t yet clear any vaccine was coming at all. Sinovac came ahead, to our barangay, and as seniors, we were called first. Three months after my Sinovac shots I got COVID all the same. I did survive, as you can see, without hospitalization, though not without a scare.

Sometime in October last year our Moderna came, and we got our double dose. After three months I underwent a simple but serious enough procedure to unblock two heart passages. In early June I was pronounced healthy enough to receive my first Pfizer booster. By that time, however, my city had temporarily run out Pfizer, and we had to get ours in Taguig.

Harder

If you think getting the vaccine was difficult enough, you can’t imagine the challenge of getting it all recorded in one health department database from which a certification can be issued for travel purposes. Indeed, nothing came easy, but we were dogged.

What made everything even harder was you couldn’t just show up and line up at the Bureau of Quarantine; you had to register on line for an appointment first, even if you showed up, as we did, and no one else was there but the office-keepers idle in their booths. Back home, we did as told—go to the website for the appointment and pay for it online. We got our card on our second trip.

As for the health department certification, we presumed the authorized vaccine dispensers had sent our vaccination data promptly enough to the department that all it would take was for us to go to VaxCert.PH and download what we needed. For days, we were told “no record of your vaccines.”

Aren’t we grateful we have

I was going to sea at 82. We just didn’t realize how much work it would take preparing

the barangay leadership we have?

From our kapitan to our kagawad to the office crew, two young IT experts in particular, we had more than the help we deserved. We came away wondering, indeed, what we would do without them.

Apparently if we had taken all our vaccines, including boosters, in our city, the tracking may have been a lot easier. But we took three kinds of vaccines in three different cities. Still, organization and promptness would have eased things. In other words, the problem was in the thicket of bureaucracy.

But we’re not out of the woods. There’s yet the One Health Pass required by our own government when we return, to be downloaded from another official Philippine site 72 hours before our return—a clean bill of health issued online!

Right now, I don’t want to even think about it—if only to give my newly repaired heart some rest.