When it comes to travel not all vaccines are equal. As much as I'd like to advocate that the best vaccine is the one you have in your arm, that's not necessarily the case if you plan to travel soon.
To be clear I'm not an anti-vaxxer and would highly encourage you to get vaccinated ASAP if it is available to you so we can end this pandemic. Unfortunately, several countries that have slowly reopened or had announced plans of reopening borders for fully vaccinated individuals do not acknowledge some vaccine brands.
An example would be when Iceland reopened to tourists for those who have been fully vaccinated last March. They only acknowledged 4 Covid vaccine brands namely:
Astrazeneca
Pfizer
Johnson & Johnson
Moderna
The majority of Western Europe only acknowledges these brands.
This means all other vaccine brands including China's Sinovac and Russia's Sputnik will not be considered. Sadly for us in the Philippines, majority of the vaccines we have are Sinovac and if you follow the news you already know why.
Not to get political, but that's just how it works being a third-world country. As bleak as it may sound it's not a lost cause. Fortunately, we do have Astrazeneca available here in our country as well as Pfizer just recently.
I specifically avoided Sinovac and was luckily able to get the Astrazeneca vaccine because I really do want to travel abroad soon and didn't want to risk getting barred from entering a country over the vaccine I got.
Take note that several European countries and other first-world countries have and will most likely follow suit in the near future with regards to this "vaccine discrimination".
Bottom line
If you have any plans of traveling then get one of the 4 vaccine brands mentioned above. If you don't have any plans on traveling then please get vaccinated with whatever brand you can get to protect yourself and others around you.
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