DogNo1

I telephoned Phya Thai 2 and they told me that if I can't straighten things out with the website, I can come to the hospital and register directly with them!

I get the same page as Samtam a few minutes ago.  I then went back to the original intervac page but was unable to log in with my email and password.  I hope that they get the problems fixed.  I wonder if going to Phya Thai 2 in person would allow me to register there.

After my conversation with Bumrungrad this afternoon, I have come to understand that there are two different registration procedures.   Bumrungrad has my name on a list that will reserve a Moderna (and maybe Pfizer) shot in the September - November timeframe and if I want the Chinese or AstraZeneca vaccine, I must make a separate reservation through the www. thailandintervac.com website or one of the designated locations such as 7-11, etc.  Who knows what that timeframe will be for foreigners.

'In short, one reservation does not cover all of the vaccines.   Of course, vaccines donated by America may trigger a third vaccination queue!

A call to Bumrungrad today revealed that the hospital does not expect to have its own vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer) until September or October.  In the meantime they can help you register for a government-sponsored vaccine through a website that is only for the use of diplomats and international organizations.  There doesn’t appear to be a website on which we ordinary foreigners can register.  So perhaps lost in translation was the newspaper statement that “ordinary foreigners” will be able to register for vaccinations which will be administered starting on June 7th.  It is not clear whether foreigners without a pink card will ever be able to register in the Bangkok area.
Maybe things will change when Thailand receives vaccines donated by the US.

Whether the US could ship to Thailand any of the millions of excess doses of vaccines in America that my tax dollars paid for depends on the ability of the president and his staff to find Thailand on the map.  That may require a lot of briefing and consultation about whether tax payers overseas are really more entitled to vaccines that they paid for than other country nationals in need.   
 

I have faithfully and scrupulously paid tax on all of my earnings whether US or Foreign.   If we don’t get vaccine assistance here, next year I will think about whether I really need to report my foreign pension or not.

How many times must we register?  I have registered and re-registered with Bumrungrad many times.  I have confirmed my contact information with them many times. They have always said that they will notify me when a vaccination is available but I have heard nothing.  In the meantime, I read of foreigners scheduled for vaccinations in early June.  Must I also register with the new government list that just opened today?  How can I know whether a registration is valid or not?  I am a 78-year-old man with a heart condition so am in the most vulnerable cohort.  

I have contacted Bumrungrad 4-5 times and the answer is always that I will be notified.  With the growth in the number of infections in Bangkok, I am ready to pack an overnight bag and flee to America.  The lack of dependable information has me very worried.

How many times must we register?  I have registered and re-registered with Bumrungrad many times.  I have confirmed my contact information with them many times. They have always said that they will notify me when a vaccination is available but I have heard nothing.  In the meantime, I read of foreigners scheduled for vaccinations in early June.  Must I also register with the new government list that just opened today?  How can I know whether a registration is valid or not?  I am a 78-year-old man with a heart condition so am in the most vulnerable cohort.  

I have contacted Bumrungrad 4-5 times and the answer is always that I will be notified.  With the growth in the number of infections in Bangkok, I am ready to pack an overnight bag and flee to America.  The lack of dependable information has me very worried.

Regarding reactions to problems, there are three adjectives that can be applied to behavior taken: proactive, reactive and post-active.  The objective matters and determines which behaviors are appropriate. Certain actions will produce primary and secondary results.  In the event of a health threat to the population of a country, prompt treatment and prevention will preserve health and inspire calmness and confidence in the population. Doing otherwise will have negative results which will not soon be forgotten.  It's the secondary results which are often not adequately anticipated.   Good luck to the Thai government when it must deal with the results of its post-active approach to the pandemic.

What really hit me was the Tom Yam Kung.  So hot that gulping your Mekong with soda seemed to put the fire out

I couldn't agree with you more!  A lot of America's public money should be diverted to the purpose of building vaccine production centers.  So should the resources of other wealthy countries.

BTW, the cleaning staff told me that an Australian resident of the hotel was recently vaccinated at his embassy.  They asked me why I couldn't get vaccinated at my embassy.

Following up on a post on the forum, I telephoned St.Louis and was told that their registration list for June injections is already full.  I must try to register again in August.  I put my name on a list at Bumrungrad back in February but have had no response to my questions about being vaccinated there.

Also the husband of a woman who works at the South African Embassy will soon be vaccinated there.

The cost, time on flights and re-entry requirements and quarantine are a problem in returning to a US territory for a vaccine and make that option very costly.  I'm still hoping for the supply of vaccines to be increased here through donations.  Japan could become an option if their vaccine rollout speeds up.  I'm a permanent resident there.

Yesterday on TV Biden specified 80 million doses.  I think that at some point, the number increased.  It had been 20 million.

Perhaps no donated vaccine will come here but we could lobby for a share.  The situation regarding vaccines seems volatile and I'm hoping for a positive change..

Joe Biden has announced that 80 million doses of vaccines will be exported to unnamed countries between now and July.  America could donate millions of AstraZeneca vaccine to Thailand with the same proviso that China used: vaccinate a certain number of Americans (or foreigners) and get a certain number of doses donated.  Without donated vaccine from abroad, we elderly foreigners will need to spend the next 4-5 months in our rooms trying to stay well until we can be vsccinated.

Thailand's discriminatory vaccination policy must be publicized internationally.

It does seem to be true that the American big pharma companies were not willing to share their patents so other countries could not produce their vaccines locally. The short supply of vaccine is not just the fault of Thailand.  It is also due to the greed of American pharma.

The topic of this post says it all: income from tourists trumps protecting the most vulnerable -elderly foreigners.  We've got to get this news out.  I wrote to Dr. John Campbell but haven't received a reply.  I wonder if the BBC would be willing to publicise this.

Call me naive but I had not been aware of the institutional negativity toward foreigners.  I wonder how this bias will affect tourism in the future.  The negativity apparently doesn't extend to Chinese so there may be an adequate number of Chinese tourists in the future to replace westerners who are discouraged from coming.

So the unavailability of the vaccines to foreigners until August probably holds true.  I had hoped that the vaccines would be available to all residents over 60 with no nationalty being prioritized.  I know this is the Chiang Mai forum but I actually live in Bangkok.  I am on the waiting list of two hospitals here but neither of them have vaccines available to foreigners yet.  I will hope for vaccines becoming available here before August due to a greater supply than anticipated through foreign donations or some other unanticipated source.  I will try waiting it out since my other country of residence, Japan, now has a large outbreak too.  They are vaccinating the elderly there without discrimination as to nationality although their supplies of the vaccines are limited too.

Since the infection rate here remains under one percent, I will probably be OK if I am safe and lucky.

Thanks for your advice.

I don't know if I am allowed to post a link to an article on voanews.com entitled "Overseas and Overlooked" or not.  The article discusses the dilemma faced by American residents of Thailand in trying to be vaccinated.  It quotes a statement by the Thai Health Service on May 6th saying that everyone residing in Thailand will be vaccinated.  It doesnt say anything about the order in which residents will be vaccinated so it neatly skips over the declaration by various authorities that Thai people will be vaccinated first, at least in some areas.  There doesn't appear to be any desire on the part of American officials to come to the aid of American Expats.

The Biden administration is sending PPE, ventilators and other equipment to India and may send some of the ten of millions of AsrtaZenica doses in Baltimore but there appears to be no desire to send vaccines to Thailand for expats.

IMO, the omission of the information that Thais will take priority over foreigners needs to be remedied.  Maybe that can only be done through the popular press such as the NYT or Washington Post.  Should we appeal to the FCCT to help fill the information gap?

I agree with shdmn.  Also, I think that the strategy all along has been to only supply the locally produced AZ vaccine along with the Chinese vaccine.  I doubt that any other vaccines will be imported.  The government is only requesting the Moderna vaccine just now and its orders are backlogged so Thailand is not likely to receive any doses for a long time even if it does now place a formal order.

With limited vaccine doses available the government can't be seen to allow foreigners to go first by paying more than Thais.  I hope that it will turn out that some foreigners can be included as the Thais get vaccinated.

Of course, if the India/Nepal variant gets into Thailand, all bets  are off.  I will immediately book a flight back to America to be vaccinated shortly after my arrival.  I don't plan to return to Thailand after that but will live out my remaining years in a retirement center in Pennsylvania.

BTW, the Thai medical establishment is plenty angry about the situation.  They would have liked imported vaccines to be available much sooner but apparently greed won out.

I hope that testing in Thailand is thorough enough to identify and track the Indian Variant if (when?) it gets into Thailand.  I'm now contemplating booking my return to the US.  I won't be coming back.  My decision will be based on Thailand's vaccination policy and the trajectory of COVID infections in June.  I can't believe that a country so dependent on tourism would adopt such a nationalistic vaccination policy.  I hope that their vaccination policy is widely reported around the world.  There is no need for Thais to serve as "guinea pigs" for the Thai version of the AZ Vaccine as a commenter said in a local newspaper.  It has already been certified as safe by all the pertinent bodies.

BTW, is it true that Siam Bioscience will only be able to produce two million doses in June?

Sorry!  I found photos of the company on the web and announcements regarding the company in a local newspaper.  I am curious though about the more than six months between the company's announcement that it would produce the vaccine and its actual production of testable samples this month.  There were glitches in the US.  Were there some here too?  

There was no discussion of the price of a vaccination in the newspaper article.  I know that AZ plans to offer the vaccine at cost while Pfizer and Moderna project profits of $38 to $48 billion. 

Are any details known about the Thai company that will supposedly produce vaccine doses next month?  How many doses will be produced?  When will they be available?  Why is it taking so long to produce them?

The Thai government apparently didn't expect an outbreak of COVID before June when its local company is supposed to begin producing the AZ Vaccine.  Different plans to import vaccines before June were apparently discussed but vetoed by someone.   My doctors expected to be giving shots in April. For whatever reasons, importing vaccines seemed to be difficult probably partly for financial considerations.  Officials apparently naively believed that a large outbreak would not occur but it did.  Probably because of limited supplies of vaccines, Thai nationals were given priority for the injections.  For me, that was the last straw.  In every SE Asian country I have lived in, foreign nationals have always been prioritized over foreigners, but not in a stated governmental policy.  Thailand has taken a step too far.  

I don't know whether the details of the vaccine scandal will ever be exposed but I am curious to know what they are.

I hope that the Thai Government will remedy its mistakes and procure suffficient vaccines to inoculate everyone residing in Thailand, whether Thai or foreigner, as soon as possible.

Jingthing:. There have been so many announcements and counter-announcements that they can be confusing. Are you sure that foreigners are not now being included with Thais?  I received a call from Bumrungrad three days ago saying that I was on their list.  They didn't say what the time frame was but I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that its injections would proceed in parallel with those individuals on the government Mor Por list with the private hospitals receiving their vaccines from a separate source.

I would like to suggest that people keep a buffer amount in their bank accounts to cover the occasional glitches of unintended withdrawals.  How about 805,000 or 405,000?  That would be insurance against needing to pay an agent or redo your permission to stay.  Whatever amount is needed to cover an unexpected withdrawal should be kept in the account which should be untouchable for ordinary use.  Perhaps those who are caught by small unexpected underages could discreetly ask if there is some way that the small amount could be overlooked just this time.  Also, there may be agents who can fix the small error for a small fee.  It doesn't hurt to do some asking around at immmigration but it must be done discretely.