Schroedinger's covid shot (getting a covid passport in Finland)

For about five months, I both did and did not have a second covid shot, according to Finland. Here’s the story of how I finally got Finland to recognize the covid shot I received in the US and qualify me for the all-important covid passport.

Jeremy and I each got our first covid vaccination shot in Finland in early June 2021. The system here was rolled out concurrently through national and occupational healthcare, based on risk groups + age. In the end, Jeremy’s turn came up through occupational healthcare one day before mine came up through the national healthcare system (this was in early June). Finland was spacing their shots out by eight weeks at the time, so at the appointment for our first dose, we received appointments in August for our second doses.

At the end of June, we went to the US and drove from the Salt Lake City airport to the first Walgreen’s we could find. There, Jeremy and I got our second shots and the girls got their first. Three weeks later, the girls got their second doses at a Walgreen’s in Portland. We returned to Finland at the end of July fully vaccinated, before shots for ages 12-16 had even been approved in Finland for the non-risk-group population. We were so glad to be fully vaccinated ourselves, to have gotten the girls fully vaxxed before school started, and, frankly, to have saved six whole doses of Pfizer for someone else in Finland to enjoy (supplies were very limited throughout the spring and summer).

As soon as the jet lag wore off, I took all our US vaccination cards to the local health clinic here to have them enter the information into the national healthcare system database thing (it’s called omakanta and it contains all your medical records). But when I got there, they told me they couldn’t do that/wouldn’t do that/and didn’t we have something other than just a square of cardstock to prove we’d gotten the shots? I explained that the square of cardstock was the most official thing I had, in all its stamps-and-scribbles glory. (I know that people whose healthcare is based in the US have been able to get digital certificates of vaccination from their insurance company or PCP but we don’t have any of that - just a dude in a Walgreen’s in Draper and a lady in a Walgreen’s in Portland, blessed be their names forever.)

In the end - the end of July, at least - we were able to get the healthcare center here to write a “v-lausunto” - a statement saying that we said we had received our shots and had documentation showing such-and-such date/time/dose, etc. It was the best they could do. And it was good enough…until it wasn’t.

In the meantime, though, Jeremy and I briefly considered keeping our “second” dose appointments in August since boosters were being talked about and it seemed they would be approved. So we wouldn’t be doing any medical harm by getting a third shot and we’d tidy up our Finnish medical records in the process. But ultimately we didn’t feel good about taking those doses away from someone else, just for bureaucracy reasons. We both cancelled our second dose appointments.

But back to our v-lausunto statement not being good enough! In the fall, it was clear that we were moving toward a national covid passport system, where a QR code connected to omakanta (online medical records) would display your vaccination status. And only fully vaccinated, recently recovered, previously infected + 1 dose, or recently tested would be “green” or eligible to enter a venue/eat at a restaurant/travel/etc. So we really needed omakanta to know about our second shots, and both of the girls’ shots. (If you’re thinking that “recently tested” could be a work-around, you can’t take a home test or test for free at the local clinic if it’s to go to a concert. Private tests are easily 200 EUR here.)

In September and October, I called, left messages, sent emails, and visited All the Places multiple times. The covid vaccination hotline told me to call the local health center. The local health center told me to call the covid vaccination hotline. A different person on the covid vaccination hotline told me to go to the main healthcare clinic downtown. I went there and waited for an hour to talk to a person who told me they couldn’t do anything for me. At one point, I called a help number for omakanta itself and they were like “ma’am, this is tech support.” Someone told me to fill out a “vaccine record correction form” on omakanta and I did that - then got a response that there was no system at all in place to enter in shots received outside the EU, but that such a system was being worked on and should be up and running by late October or early November.

So we waited. And then, in mid-November, six days before a concert I had tickets to, Finland announced that it would now require the covid passport for events and restaurants. Let’s talk about this particular concert, and then the particular cruelty of having six days’ warning.

I bought tickets to this concert (Hans Zimmer music) in October of 2019. The concert was originally scheduled for late March 2020. It was cancelled a few days beforehand, obviously, and rescheduled for November 2020. Then March 2021. And then, finally, November 2021. At this point, I had been waiting for TWO YEARS for this concert. They emailed ticketholders a week beforehand to confirm that yes, it was finally happening! And then the six-days’-notice about the covid pass came, and I saw the concert slipping away from me once again, this time for good.

I called the venue and said I had two shots, was fully vaccinated, and had a mix of Finnish and US paperwork to show it. But she explained (very sympathetically and sadly, she was such a lovely person) that they could ONLY accept a covid passport, nothing else. So the six days of notice I had were just six days in which I could basically mourn the loss of this thing I had been looking forward to - not enough time to do anything about it (because even going to get a “second shot” would need 14 days afterward to be valid for the covid passport); plenty of time to feel really sad.

In any case, I could see the writing on the wall and decided to go get a “second” (third) shot in Finland. Our situation was just ridiculous at this point, and only getting worse. Not only could we not qualify for a covid passport, they were starting to schedule booster shots based on the date of your second shot…which Finland didn’t think we had, so we would never get an invitation. I had tried everything to get them to accept our US paperwork, and they wouldn’t. And my ethical concerns about jumping the queue were eased by the fact that Finland was starting to say that you could get a booster if your original two doses had been administered within six weeks of each other (ours were).

So early in the morning a few days before the concert (which I was sure I would miss out on), I went to our local clinic and first tried one more time to get our US shots entered into the system. The lady there really went to bat for me - at one point she asked if I was in a hurry because she was going to try to call a bunch of places, and I said, “if you can do this for me, I can stay here all day.” After about half an hour, she hadn’t been able to do anything herself, but she did give me a slip of paper with a new phone number and address of a place I hadn’t called/visited/bothered yet, and told me to go there. It was promising…but I’d heard “just go here and they can do it” before.

The next thing I did at the clinic was go upstairs and get a “second” (third) shot. The lady downstairs told me it was fine - according to Finland, I did not have a second shot, and so I had the right to go get one.

The next morning, I checked my vaccination status on omakanta and to my very great surprise and delight, it said I had received THREE shots and was fully vaccinated. To this day, two weeks later, I have no idea how that happened. I imagine that the person who entered in my “second” (third) shot saw something in my record (like how often I had called and visited and showed paperwork, and probably that v-lausunto statement as well), and decided to just enter it all in. But I don’t know.

A bit later that day, I went to Turku’s infectious disease monitoring office. This was the special place on the slip of paper that the lady at the local clinic had given me the day before. I had the lady there confirm that my covid passport was now valid - it was! But we still had Jeremy and the girls to deal with. I gave her all of our documents and she made copies of everything. Then she said something amazing: she could do it! She could enter it in. I wish I could say I believed her but I didn’t, not even after I had seen my own miracle (still a mystery).

But I got to go to my concert! And even though with all the rescheduling we ended up with a slightly less skilled orchestra, it was still live music and still Hans Zimmer and they played their hearts out and I enjoyed it so much.

And last week, I got an email from the wonderful human being at the infectious diseases monitoring office with covid passports for Jeremy and the girls. Another miracle! My first favorite thing was the covid passports; my second favorite thing was when she remarked, “it sure is nice of you to take care of this paperwork process/errand for your husband and kids.”

So now we can attend/participate in ballet recitals, and go to a restaurant if we want, and a Christmas concert in a couple of weeks. Life feels better with a covid passport!

As with most bureaucratic nightmares, I really don’t have any idea what we did right or wrong, or what really happened to make it all work in the end. I could have tried asking the infectious disease monitoring office back in August to enter our shots, but it’s possible they didn’t have the ability or process to do so back then. Maybe Jeremy and I should have kept our August shot appointments and just cast our ethical concerns aside. Maybe it would have been done automatically anyway at some point without all the phone calls and visits. And I will never know who entered in my shot just in time for my covid passport to be valid before my concert. But I’m glad it’s all sorted now!