Vaccinations

Last thursday I got my Johnson&Johnson vaccine. This was an important prerequisite to being able to start the tour and I am very happy I got it. I had a slight fever and was not feeling very well on Friday, but now everything is fine again. So now the remaining issue are the Covid19 cases that might prevent the opening of all borders.

Looking at the current reproduction rates from "Our World in Data":

They are below 1 in all countries on the route besides Russia and they keep falling. The progress in vaccinations is varying a lot:

Suprisingly Mongolia has the highest share of people that have received a first vaccination dose.

And there is no correlation between reproduction rate, vaccinated share. Georgia with almost no vaccinations and lots of Corona cases is still opening its borders while Hungary with a high vaccination rate, low case count is still closed to travellers.

Hungary will not be an issue since I can travel through Ukraine instead. But Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia will be a problem if nothing changes. So I hope they will open their border in the next few weeks before I arrive.

Besides Covid19 there are also other additional vaccinations I need in before setting off: Hepatits A/B (3 shots), typhus (1 shot) and rabies (3 shots). 3 of the shots are still missing and I will be really happy, once I have received all of them. I guess I have more often to a doctor in the last few weeks than I have been the more than 5 years before. Did I mention my dentist?

But after reading on Caravanistan (great source of information for silk road travels) about the local hospitals: "Generally a scary affair.". This seems to be a good investment ;)

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