That flu wave two years ago was brutal. The whole family went through it one by one, the child had a febrile seizure from the high fever, and afterward everyone coughed for nearly a month β couldn't even sleep properly at night. Last year I learned my lesson, got the vaccine in September, and the whole winter was much calmer, with far less coughing. So this September, as soon as school started, I began organizing it.
Then things got surreal.
First I opened the Health Cloud app and picked a Pudong community hospital. Scrolling for ages β not a single slot anywhere. Not "fully booked" β the option simply didn't exist, as if flu vaccines didn't exist in Pudong at all. Switched to several others. Same.
Unwilling to give up, I searched private-hospital vaccine packages on Dianping. The private clinics did have them, but customer service told me: "No stock in Pudong. If you want the shot, you have to go to Puxi."
I was stunned. Puxi? I live in Pudong β I have to cross the river for a vaccine? I even planned to go straight to work afterward.
One Huangpu River, drawing the boundary for vaccines too. People in Pudong who want the shot either wait or cross the river β a bit like the old "mandarin-duck hotpot" split. I looked online and someone said Xuhui is always the first district to get stock.
Eventually, through an inside channel, I booked the earliest batch to arrive at a private Pudong hospital. And on the day the batch arrived β the kid got sick.
Actually, there had been signs two or three days earlier β rubbing his eyes, a runny nose. I hoped it was just a common cold. The morning of the vaccination day, I took his temperature: high fever. Ran the respiratory panel β sure enough, flu A.
The vaccine takes two to four weeks to kick in, so getting infected in that window means the shot is wasted. We had to wait. Meanwhile, my mother and I β the close caregivers of the little mobile virus vault β both went down.
Dragging our sick bodies to the community hospital, we found it packed β coughing and feverish people everywhere, in registration and the waiting room alike. Then I saw a notice at the vaccination desk: only the self-paid vaccine was available now; the free one hadn't arrived yet and needed more waiting.
The free one hadn't arrived.
I was baffled. Who gets the free vaccine? Students and the elderly. Students sit in classrooms all day β one cold spreads through an entire class. The elderly are fragile; flu can turn serious. These two groups need it most. Yet the free batch arrives last. The self-paid batch comes first, private clinics have stock β but not in Pudong; you have to cross to Puxi.
Because it's free, it's protected last? Because of district lines, Pudong has to wait? I don't understand. I really don't.
Getting vaccinated last year genuinely worked, which is exactly why I started arranging it in September this year. And after all that arranging β no shot, and the whole family sick. The only "takeaway" was personally verifying one thing: in 2026 Shanghai, getting a flu shot requires luck, requires crossing a river, and requires beating the virus to the punch.
And the virus never respects district lines, and doesn't care whether you're free or self-paid.
Next year, I plan to start the whole family's flu shots in late August. Hope it works.