I’ve had my first vaccine in New York, and realised just how lucky we are

We weren’t expecting to get vaccinated until the end of summer but then the rollout went into overdrive and now we’ve had our first jabs – hopefully it won’t be long before I can see my parents again, writes Holly Baxter

Just a few short weeks ago, we were being told people in our age group would wait until the end of the summer for a jab (Getty)

On Monday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a vaccine appointment in Rockaway Beach, Queens. The long-awaited jab was arrived at through much strife: when New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state was going to open up appointments to all New Yorkers age 16 and over, my husband and I went into full “Glastonbury Festival ticket-buying” mode. We parked our laptops and phones beside each other, upgraded our internet connection and began setting alarms for 6am so we could try to nab the first appointments released for the day. Like pretty much everyone else in NYC, we also signed up to notifications from Turbovax, a website built by an enterprising local man that collates all the data on appointments and buzzes phones every time more jabs are dropped off in certain places. After a week of losing out on appointments by microseconds, E was woken by a Turbovax notification at 8am on a Sunday and jumped online. And all of a sudden, we were in.

Just a few short weeks ago, we were being told that people in our age group would probably wait until the end of the summer until we became eligible to receive this season’s most coveted accessory: a vaccinating shot against Covid-19. Then, after a speech by Joe Biden, hundreds of thousands of jabs appeared to descend upon New York. All of a sudden, we were told we’d all be vaccinated by May. With vaccine appointments just three weeks apart here – as opposed to the UK’s spacing of 12 – we’re now facing the possibility of being fully vaccinated at the same time as our parents in England.

It’s one small jab for a woman, you see, but one huge step towards me being able to see my family in the UK again

This afternoon’s appointment came with big dystopian energy. My Pfizer jab was scheduled to be given at New York Aqueduct, which is, confusingly, not an aqueduct but a racecourse. I reached it by the A train on the subway, on an uncharacteristically grey, cold and drizzly day, as if England had come for a visit. I wore my Dolly Parton sweatshirt (lest we forget, the singer is one of the biggest funders of Covid vaccine research) and stuffed the pockets of my cheery yellow raincoat with all the necessary accoutrements: health insurance card, passport, US visa and digital copy of my tenancy contract as proof of residency.

At midday, the racecourse loomed out of the rain and SUVs barrelled past me, filled with upstate New Yorkers and Upper East Side Manhattanites who are too good for public transport. I was greeted by members of the army and directed into various lines where my papers were checked. Around us, the walls were plastered with handwritten notices stating “NO PICTURES” and “NO VIDEO”. QR codes for “what to expect after your vaccination” were taped over old notices from the racecourse about not making “lewd gestures” and who to contact if you think you might be addicted to gambling.

As I got to the front of the line, a woman stepped out in front of me and received her injection from the same nurse assigned to me. Almost immediately, she turned pale. “I don’t feel so good,” she said, before keeling over and dropping to the floor. The nurse, without skipping a beat, yelled “doctor!” and a medical team emerged from behind a curtain, strapped the woman into a contraption that elevated her feet, and took her off behind the curtain again. I watched this scene unfold with more than a little trepidation. The nurse then immediately returned from wherever the woman had been taken and said brightly: “Holly?”

In that moment, I did consider saying “who? No, I must be in the wrong place” and making a run for it. Of course, that’s not what I decided to do. Instead, I stood forward and had the vaccine myself, all the while keeping a side-eye on that curtain in the corner. As I was then directed to the waiting room for a compulsory 15-minute post-vaccine observation, I saw the woman ahead of me saunter out from behind the curtain. “Oh, I faint every time I get a shot,” she said blithely to the doctor beside us. “Do you know where I can get a Coke?”

Double-masked and Band-Aided, I waited on the seats overlooking the empty racecourse, rain thumping down onto a well-manicured track that hadn’t been used since 2019. Then, once my time expired, I left through an exit flanked by life-size replica jockeys, past a “Wall of Gratitude” with Post-It notes thanking the doctors and nurses, which had taken the place of a betting booth, and through an archway depicting both a set of racing horses and the universal New York State sign of vaccination: a flexed arm with a tiny plaster on it, next to the Statue of Liberty.

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I walked in formation with my fellow New Yorkers, some of us peeling off to the car park and others squelching our way back to the A train station. Impolitely, we looked each other up and down; more politely, we nodded at each other in that exaggerated way everyone does these days, while the lower halves of our faces are covered from enquiring eyes. Sometimes it’s hard to read those looks, but today I knew what we were communicating to each other: we are so lucky. Even those of us who faint at the sight of blood.

It’s one small jab for a woman, you see, but one huge step towards me being able to see my family in the UK again. Blighty, consider yourself on notice.