I really wish the kantons had the sense to plan and communicate for this moment. At least in Vaud there was a queue to get a spot, which prevented the website from crashing.

just noticed distribution of vaccines is 55/45 female/male .. and that in light of woman living statistically longer than man (85.6 vs 81.9) calls for discrimination of males - and skews generations to go statistical data !

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home...xpectancy.html

Just to update folk here:
21:09 - Managed to get an appointment in Thun for tomorrow.
22:09 - Partner managed to get appointment in Thun for Friday.

Second appointments for exactly a month later.

No idea which vaccine it is.

Phew, and good luck everyone, keep refreshing!

One of the standard replies to the question „what brings you here“ (to my doctor‘s office) is: „my wife“. I honestly cannot recall anyone saying „my husband“. The most extreme case wheezed in during a stint at a hospital in Appenzell, a farmer who was functioning on barely a quarter of his lung volume and died less than three weeks later from small cell lung cancer. (In Appenzell dialect, my wife is „d Fröi“, pronounced like the first syllable of Freude.) He hadn‘t really noticed any, you know, real shortness of breath. It sure saved him the indignities of chemotherapy... There was a notorious study among British civil servants that showed married men lived longer than unmarried ones and the effect for women was vice versa. But I digress

I see that, in the poll here, someone has now reported "Serious side effects - more than 2 days off work."

I'm curious what the serious side effect are or were. I have my 1st shot scheduled for next week, and while I'm so happy to finally be getting the vaccine, I confess that there is a tiny part of me that is nervous about it.

Speaking of the devil just got another text:
“Your registration for a vaccination appointment is still valid. We will text you as soon as a vaccination appointment is available for you.”

Yesterday, I registered for the free test in the local pharmacy and luckily the result came out negative. It’s very similar to the pregnancy test and it takes a swab from one’s nose. Turn it four times, dip it in the solution, squeeze four drops via nozzle of the tiny flask and drip them in the tester, wait out 15min and the bar will appear to herald one’s ultimate destiny.

__________________
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General Information About Swiss Tennis
Tennis Lessons Summer Winter Seasons
🎾🎾Our charity organization to help unprivileged kids to realize their dreams:
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Other than a sore arm that's lasted a couple of days, I had no side effects. It's just like getting any other vaccine.

I picked up my "pack o' 5" of the free, home tests from our pharmacy last week. Apparently they can be used on kids as well, and everyone gets 5 free tests per month. The pharmacist said they're more to be used to try to make sure you don't have the virus before getting together with other people or going to work, etc., but that if you actually have symptoms, it's best to get a normal test at your doctor's office or a testing center.

I had to find the instructions for the home-test in English online because the pamphlet that came with the tests was only in German, French and Italian (naturally). I'll put a link to that instructional video in English here in case it helps anyone else:

"COVID-19 self-test instructions"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWNZ_RYc-nU

I looked at the pictures and already figured it out

Some basic info for anyone who has an appointment at the vaccination centre at Messe Luzern:

• Overall very efficient: I was in and out in half an hour, including check-in, the jab itself, 15 minutes resting time and check-out. They have about 40 check-in and vaccination booths.
• Plenty of staff on hand to guide you through the process. Everyone I had contact with spoke English. The woman at check-in even asked me if it was OK to do the check-in procedure in English as she wanted to practise :-)
• I was asked for my ID about 4 times altogether. Nobody asked for my health insurance card, although at check-out they did ask me to confirm that the Krankenkasse name they had was correct.
• Take your yellow vaccination booklet with you if you have one, they will stamp it and put a sticker in it at check-out.
• The vaccine being used (or at least that was being used today) is Moderna.

Edit: One oddity: I just noticed that the paper certificate I received at check-out is in French and English, but not in German. Nobody asked me about my preference during the process, so I can only assume that this is related to the language I chose when I registered online back in January (French).

Caution - detour ahead:

Where the heart is, and all that.

While we do not have as succinct a word for it as the Swiss do, the emotional concept of 'Heimat' is actually rather universal.

No matter where I roam, Chicago will always and forever be home.


And to get back on topic:

By the time I get the second dose, it will have been 18 months since my last trip back home, the longest I have been away in almost 30 years of living abroad. I am soooooo looking forward summer in Chicago, seeing all the people I love again. And finally meeting the three newest members of the family.

Roll on vaccination day!

I imagine English may be included with all certificates for the purposes of international travel.

Can someone explain the letter system for risk groups for the COVID vaccine? On this thread there are casual mentions of groups like M, N, D, E. Where do these letters come from, and are they canton- or language-specific?
There are mentions of risk groups on the BAG website (in English: https://foph-coronavirus.ch/vaccinat...be-vaccinated/), and on various canton websites, but so far I have not found a concordance to a letter system anywhere.
Specifically, I wonder whether/what letter system may apply in St. Gallen.

Yes, it was the French rather than German that surprised me. But actually it's good that the system remembers the language you registered in, rather than defaulting to the local language.

Canton specific. We don't have them in Aargau for instance. I've seen them mentioned for Bern and Zurich - not aware of any other canton which has them.

SG has no letter system afaik but vaccinates by decreasing age. See link for approximate waiting times. Not sure how they handle risk groups, but suspect you have to enter any such info when registering and they will take into account.

https://wir-impfen.ch/wartezeiten

I was at my doctors for a regular blood stealing escapade (got some on the fourth stick, a new record).
I asked about asthma and the doc said it's barely serious enough, but if I really want the Vaccine, they'll provide a letter saying I have a chronic condition and list the BAG risk group.
I'm now wondering if skipping the queue is morally deplorable, or should I just go for it and not look back.

komsomolez (and HickvonFrick)... until that Thank button

Not an easy process to get an appointment.

First my online registration I did a few weeks ago got interrupted and I couldn't complete the process online, because I was already in the system, but "not really" registered.

So managed to do it through the phone, received my confirmation with QR-Code an 6 letters per post and an email to reset the the password.

Weeks passed and I notice everyone around me getting appointments ...
So I wondered if I could also register online for the first vaccine shot and SURPRISE!!! My email was NOT registered ...

So again, I call and now they could not even find my QR-Code (6 letters) that they had sent me per post.
I had vanished from the system!!!

So again, we went through the steps of registering me through the phone and then, I could schedule the 2 vaccination appointments right away! :-) Yeaahhhhh!!!!

I would advise people to check if the same thing hasn't happen to them ...

55/45 is pretty much the ratio of the sexes among the pensioners, so proportionate allocation. If anything, the data have been skewed all along.


(is my sarcasm detector broken?)