HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — On the day she turned 19, Patricia Leon Guerrero got the news that came much earlier than she expected: People at least 16 years old can start getting Covid-19 vaccination the following day.
“It’s like a birthday gift. I was given a birthday gift,” she said.
Leon Guerrero was among the first teenagers to get their vaccination at the University of Guam Calvo Field House on Tuesday morning.
Guam opened wide its Covid-19 vaccination list, going from the last threshold of 40 and older last week to anyone who’s at least 16 years old.
Capt. Mark Scott, public affairs officer for the Guam National Guard that’s operating the UOG vaccination clinic, said they had 1,632 doses on hand Tuesday, 300 more than the appointments booked.
A number of the teens and young adults were walk-ins. Many also tagged along with their parents or older relatives who had appointments to get their first or second shot.
David Levy, 18, said he and his younger brother Billy, who’s turning 16 in April, went to UOG as early as 8 a.m. as walk-ins.
Their parents had already been vaccinated.
“I realize that it made the cases drop lower, like getting vaccinated. And I realized that it’s better to just get vaccinated now instead of facing the consequences of not. So it’s better to be safe than sorry,” the 18-year-old student at John F. Kennedy High School said.
Reach out if you’re uncertain
Leon Guerrero, a freshman at UOG, said she believes she will help protect the elderly in their household by also getting vaccinated. She was on her way to her birthday dinner Monday night when she got the news.
Getting a shot, Leon Guerrero said, is a way “to help us go back to some normalcy.”
The governor said if at least 50% of the population is vaccinated by May 1, tourism can reopen and quarantine restrictions will be amended.
Althea Engman, who turned 18 just a few days ago, said she’s thankful younger people can now get vaccinated.
“I was actually glad that they opened up to kids my age,” the Simon Sanchez High School student said, as a precaution among teenagers who love to hang out with their peers.
And with spring break coming up, it all just makes sense to take the extra step to protect oneself and the people around them, she said.
Engman, a walk-in patient, tagged along with her mother who had an appointment to get her vaccine at UOG.
Mother-daughter team
Carlene Leon Guerrero, 47, on Monday night decided to make an appointment online to get her first Pfizer-BioNTech shot the following day. She said her sister, a nurse, advised her to take her daughter with her if she wants to.
“Because maybe there’s a chance she could just be squeezed in as a walk-in since we are together,” the mother said of her only child.
Her 17-year-old daughter, Camarin, said it wasn’t painful at all to get the shot and she immediately posted her experience on Instagram in the hopes other would also do the same.
“I’m just letting them know that they can get it,” she said.
Brendyn Padayao, a 28-year-old technician at a telecommunications company, said getting the vaccine is highly encouraged at his workplace and he’s glad about it.
But more importantly, he thought about the safety and health of his mother so he wanted to get that added layer of protection. And then there’s peer pressure from those who already got their shots ahead of him.
Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency Officer James Lujan, 29, said he waited until this week to get vaccinated, after most of the island’s most senior citizens already got their doses.
Law enforcement officers were among the first few ones to get priority vaccination.
He and two fellow Customs officers got their first Pfizer-BioNTech shot on Tuesday, a process that he said was a lot better and smoother than he expected.
‘Adverse effect’
Marlon Martinez, 49, said he and his wife didn’t want to take the risk of getting sick from Covid-19 so they decided to get vaccinated.
His wife Raquel, 48, said they also plan on traveling to the Philippines to visit their twin children so getting the vaccine now could help ease their travel experience later.
“Hopefully there won’t be adverse effects,” the husband said, as he shared a hearty laugh when he misspelled his wife’s name. “Sorry. I think that’s the adverse effect of the vaccine.”
Hundreds of people showed up at the University of Guam Calvo Field House in Mangilao to get vaccinated on Tuesday.
Photo by David Castro/The Guam Daily Post
