Hong Kong is in an interesting position in regards to this, due to recent political tensions but also cultural attitudes here around such infections (masks were already commonplace here during the flu season but became an issue during the HK protests - we also had our first wave much earlier than most, in January 2020).
I had planned to take my vaccination earlier, but my partner opted to take it first because his background is in Biotechnology, so he was already cautious (he knows how long vaccination trials are supposed to take, under *normal* circumstances) so he felt better informed in case anything were to happen to him (we're both on the priority list, since we're both university staff). It's now open to everyone 16+ in HK, but at the time I opted to take it because I teach (& therefore saw it more as my duty to be vaccinated lest I end up infecting 20+ people in one go lol).
I was originally scheduled to take the AZ vaccination, but then I received a text from the government that it would be postponed to a date of their choosing (we had a contamination issue here, where some lids had come off during transportation & could have therefore been compromised whilst in storage). I therefore deleted my appointment altogether & signed up for the Pfizer vaccine instead (here it's Comirnaty, via BionTech Foshun). I've received my first dose OK, but have heard the second is a doozy (my partner was sick for 3-4 days after his second dose). My mother-in-law originally opted not to get hers at all because we were hearing a lot of horror stories out here - one 30 year old had a stroke after taking the Pfizer one, & a few people have died after taking the SinoVac one (including a doctor). Since the number of daily cases here are still only in the double digits here, I suspect many people are forgoing the vaccination altogether in favour of mask wearing & hand washing etc instead (I didn't see many people at the vaccination centre at all - I was in & out in under 25 mins, including the obligatory 15 min post-jab wait time).
This is what I mean by 'cultural attitudes' - with or without the vaccination, we all continue to wear our masks anyway (I only take it off if teaching over Zoom - it stays on for F2F classes & meetings). So even though it's been weeks since my partner's vaccination, he still wears his mask in public (only taking it off to eat - which isn't often for either of us at the moment anyway, 'thanks' to fasting lol). It was therefore interesting to see how short-lived the mask ban was last summer (during the height of the protests) - in fact, getting people NOT to wear masks was more difficult than telling them to wear one, lol! There are also signs in most public places here that escalator handles & lift buttons are disinfected multiple times per day, so these things were common practice even before COVID (many folk here still remember how intense the SARS outbreak was).
Edit: The government have just announced that they will be stopping the Pfizer vaccination altogether from September (so we will ONLY be able to get the SinoVac vaccine after that point). So naturally, I've been seeing many more people going to go get vaccinated lately. Here's hoping I can get my second Pfizer dose OK, without interruption. They're saying that the COVID vaccination might be similar to a flu jab, in that it loses efficacy after 6 months. So it'll be interesting to see what happens after September, in terms of travelling & renewing vaccinations (whilst HK has reopened the travel bubble with Singapore, we still need vaccines & 21 day quarantine to go over there but they aren't required to do so to come here. Wonder how that's going to affect our current double-digit case count... )
