I had my second shot of AstraZeneca at MacKay hospital (Taipei City branch) a couple of days ago, exactly ten weeks after I got my first dose. The process was … OK. Whole thing took about 75 minutes, including the 15-minute wait afterwards.
You never actually go in the main part of MacKay hospital, just in a few rooms from a side door off an alley. Their explanation page has a map. Note that page does have pretty good English - just scroll down!
- If you’re coming from Shuanglian Station, walk around the front of the main building, and turn left down the first alley on Zhongshan Road. There will be a couple of initial tents and awnings - ignore those - and keep going until there’s another awning and tent back near some ventilation and a vehicle gate. Zero English signage.
- Get in one line to tell them you’re there: if you made an appointment online, they’ll have your appointment paper to give you. There is no machine to stick your card in. Then wait outside in the alley (yes, in the sun) until your number is called. I waited about thirty minutes. They called numbers in order they arrived, not the order you were on the list (thank goodness), but that does mean you need to pay close attention to the numbers. And so does everyone else. So we’re all standing in a distanced crowd, then packing together every time the nurse emerged to shout out a couple of numbers.
- They call your number (all Chinese only), you go in, and sit in a smaller queue for perhaps ten minutes. You’re waved in to see a doctor for a sort of pointless interview asking and informing about side effects. English available.
- You go sit in a small interior room with a bunch of other people. They give you a form to fill in, all Chinese. I have no idea how inaccurate my form was, but I know at one point I wrote down my wife’s name with my ID number because I assumed if they were asking for a second name it was an emergency contact, but nope, the nurse looked at my ID number and copied that down in the blank I’d filled with “?”.
- Get waved in to another room, get jab (seemed longer this time), get waved back to the small interior room. I opted to wait in a tent outside.
- Leave after 15 minutes. No one seemed to be keeping track of when you were supposed to go. I just left.
- Possibly useful information: I left a bit before 11am - and the crowd was almost all gone. I suspect you could show up at 10:30 and get through the whole thing a lot faster than I did arriving at 9:30.
Ironically, only twice in the past few months have I been in crowded inside rooms for an extended period of time. Those two times were for vaccines.
Registration: it looks like MacKay is opening up the computer registration a few days early - I see now the computer system is open for today, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. I believe the computer system only accepts bookings for those who are at least ten weeks.
However, I also chatted with a couple of people who were getting the vaccine slightly earlier - they needed to show plane tickets. So if you’re not yet at the ten-week mark, and you have a plane ticket for imminent departure, you can show up with a copy of that ticket and still get the 2nd dose of the vaccine.
I do not know if they’re only accepting people who got the first shot at MacKay.
After-effects almost unnervingly absent, in comparison to the one-day hangover and four- or five-day feeling of being slightly off with the first dose. “Wait, I’m not feeling anything! Did I get a dud?! Damn, should have listened to mom, who told me never to get injections in back alleys.” Which is quite literally what happened.