The National Institute of Public Health informs Dagbladet that about 300,000 of a total of 965,742 people over the age of 65 in Norway have received a refresher dose. On Friday, director Camilla Stoltenberg of FHI acknowledged that the work has not gone fast enough.
– We have seen that it has not gone fast enough, even though we gave a clear recommendation two weeks ago. That is why we are intensifying the way we do it, Stoltenberg told Dagbladet at Friday’s press conference.
From now on, FHI will send out refreshment doses to the municipalities instead of waiting for them to order them. In addition, municipalities are encouraged to actively call in people over the age of 65 for a vaccination agreement in order to receive a refresher dose, instead of waiting for people to contact the municipalities.
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Must double capacity
Chief physician Preben Aavitsland explains to Dagbladet why FHI has been waiting for the municipalities to order doses.
– The municipalities have the best overview of their inventory and their recall routines and expected support. The vaccines have a limited shelf life. Therefore, we have let them order the quantities they expect to need. The government has now asked the municipalities to increase their vaccination capacity significantly, and thus we can send out more doses, says Aavitsland to Dagbladet.
Dagbladet has received a letter that NIPH recently sent out to the country’s municipalities, health trusts and state administrators. It states that the government has now decided that the national vaccination capacity will be increased from 200,000 doses per week to 400,000 doses per week.
The national capacity includes both a refresher dose for people over the age of 65 and selected health personnel, a second dose of corona vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds and influenza vaccination.
The letter states that it is important that the municipalities increase their capacity as quickly as possible, and that it is a goal that the vaccination capacity should be increased by the first week of December.
SUPERVISOR: Preben Aavitsland at the National Institute of Public Health. Photo: Tor Erik Schrøder / NTB view more
Municipalities have been waiting
Aavitsland says that not everyone, but some municipalities have been waiting for people to apply for a refresher dose.
– Some municipalities have called in people, others have had a standing offer. We now encourage them to call in people over 65.
Furthermore, NIPH shall continuously assess which other groups will be offered a refresher dose. This includes people in the risk groups who are between 18 and 64 years old, as well as the rest of the population in the same age group.
Limitations
Aavitsland says that FHI does not know whether vaccination with a refreshing dose would have gone faster if these changes had been made earlier. He explains that there have been restrictions related to the vaccine interval and capacity in the municipalities.
– The interval from the second dose should be six months. We have now opened to go down to five months, says Aavitsland and continues:
– In terms of capacity, in October we used all our distribution capacity to get 1.5 million flu vaccines, and the municipalities used their vaccination capacity to set them. We did not dare to postpone the flu vaccination because we feared an early flu epidemic; we saw that the RS virus epidemic came early in the Nordic countries and feared the same thing could happen with the flu. Fortunately, it did not go that way.
In conclusion, he points out that people are tired now.
– We also see that many municipalities have worked really hard with the vaccination for ten months. People are tired. Health personnel are needed in other parts of the health service as well.
