Shanghai Taiwanese students receive COVID-19 vaccine shots
A Taiwanese teenager has a COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday at the Huacao Community Center.
Taiwanese students aged 12 to 17 flocked to vaccination sites around Shanghai over the weekend to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine shots.
At least 366 students from the Shanghai Taiwanese Children School took chartered buses to the Huacao Community Center, a temporary vaccination site in Huacao Town of suburban Minhang District, to have the inoculation.
"A total of 611 students aged 12 to 17 in our school are eligible to take the vaccination and 366 chose to come here by chartered buses or private cars to take the vaccination," said Chan Chun-nam, principal of the school.
He added that the remaining students would go to other vaccination sites by themselves.
A teacher has students from the Shanghai Taiwanese Children School to form a line.
"Parents have been looking forward to having their children vaccinated and came to eagerly ask when they could get the shots when Chinese mainland children began vaccination last month," he said.
Shanghai announced on Tuesday that it would start vaccinating youth aged 12 to 17 who are residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Reservations began on Wednesday.
Chan said most students chose the Huacao Community Center as there was a special vaccination zone for Taiwanese over the weekend, and they could get vaccinated even if they failed to make the reservation online.
Students, accompanied by parents, register for vaccination.
To ensure good order, the school deployed 38 staffers to accompany students on the buses and throughout their vaccination process, including identification and health codes checks, temperature screening and registration, vaccination and 30-minute observation.
"All the head teachers of the students are here, ready to help students out of any possible problems and watch out for adverse reaction during the 30 minutes after-vaccination observation period," he said.
As the close contacts of the most vulnerable group, students, teachers at the school got vaccinated in December and January, while most parents have also received the vaccination in the past few months.
The special zone for Taiwanese students at the vaccination site.
Hu Pin-ru, a 11th-grader, had the shot at 1:30pm. She said she only felt a little soreness and pain in her arm.
"My parents took the vaccine earlier and I wanted to take it over safety concern since the pandemic is not over yet," she said.
"The vaccines made by China have been internationally approved and proven safe and effective, so we had no hesitation at all."
A student takes a shot.
Hu Heng-kuan, a nineth-grader, said the vaccination gave him a sense of safety in terms of the current pandemic situation.
"I would feel at ease walking outside now," he said. "Parents and teachers' previous experiences make me feel it's an ordinary vaccination like others and I didn't feel anxious at all. The vaccination was so quick that it was finished when I thought it would begin. I felt only a little bit of an itch when the doctor pricked the needle into my arm."
Students seemed relaxed and chatted in the observation rooms and left with their teachers or parents after 30 minutes.
A volunteer pastes a label with the vaccination time on a student's arm and guides her to the rest area for 30 minutes for observation.
