Norway may receive 900,000 fewer doses than expected in the next three months

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Vaccine deliveries from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer could be much lower over the next three months than both the EU and Norway have expected.

– The EU will receive 210 million doses in the third quarter from Pfizer, writes the Swedish vaccine coordinator Richard Bergström in an SMS to Aftenposten.

Norway has so far received approximately 1.19 percent of the Pfizer doses delivered to the EU. In that case, it should mean that Norway will receive 2.5 million doses in the months of July, August and September. This is just over 1 million fewer doses than the Norwegian health authorities had anticipated.

If we look at the National Institute of Public Health’s vaccine calendar, it says that they have calculated 1.2 million doses of Pfizer in July, 1.2 million doses in August and 1.14 million doses in September. This will be a total of 3.54 million in the third quarter.

However, Health Minister Bent Høie said at a press conference on Monday that Pfizer will deliver approximately 900,000 fewer doses in the three months than they had anticipated.

400,000 fewer doses in July

The first sign that it would not go as FHI had expected, we got on Thursday, when VG announced that Norway would receive 400,000 fewer doses than expected in July. Deliveries would decrease from 1.2 million to approximately 800,000.

On Monday, the Minister of Health confirmed that Norway would receive fewer doses than expected also in August and September.

He also said that FHI has calculated the consequences this will have for the vaccine program. The solution that has been landed is that the interval between the first and second vaccine dose has been extended from 9 to 12 weeks. FHI also allows anyone who has received Pfizer as the first dose to receive the Moderna dose as the second vaccine dose.

According to FHI’s calculations, the consequence may be that someone may receive the first dose of vaccine one week later than first calculated. Completing the entire vaccine program can take two weeks longer than first thought.

This means that you can arrive towards the end of September before all adults have been offered two doses of vaccine.

The EU receives 100 million Moderna doses

Bergström says the EU will also receive 100 million doses of the Moderna vaccine in the third quarter. The Moderna vaccine is the second mRNA vaccine that Norway uses.

According to Bergström, Norway should have 1.4 percent of these doses, which means 1.4 million Moderna doses. This is 60,000 fewer doses than what FHI has expected when they have created their scenarios for the vaccination program.

Aftenposten has not been able to confirm these figures from FHI. But at least it does not seem that more Moderna doses can fill the gap left by fewer Pfizer doses.

Did the EU and Norway expect too much in July?

That deliveries will be lower than expected was discovered when Pfizer Norway went through what is expected to be delivered in early July.

Pfizer Norway has only a clear picture of how many doses will arrive in Norway approximately one month in advance. Thus, it was only now in the beginning of June that they could say something certain about what is actually coming in July.

Aftenposten is informed that the reduced number of deliveries is not due to a fault at one of Pfizer’s factories. It should instead be about the EU, and Norway, expecting more than what Pfizer is able to deliver.

– We had hoped to get more in July and less in September. But now we get an even advantage over the three months, Bergström writes in an SMS to Aftenposten.

Pfizer delivered more in a period in the second quarter, but that acceleration will end on June 30, according to Bergström.

– Completely according to plan, Bergström writes.

He gives no explanation as to why the total number of doses for the third quarter will be lower than the Norwegian authorities had expected.

However, he says that Sweden had expected 4.98 million doses, and that this is what Sweden will get. The question is thus whether Norway has miscalculated.

– We deliver as agreed

While Pfizer delivered more doses than normal until June, it seems that they are now returning more to “normal”.

– We see that the estimated deliveries at the beginning of July will now be lower than in June, this also applies to several other countries in Europe. One of the reasons for this is also that we are delivering many extra vaccine doses now towards the summer holidays, says communications manager Joachim Henriksen in Pfizer Norway.

Pfizer says they will live up to the agreements they have with the EU.

– For the third quarter, ie the months of July, August and September, we expect to deliver in accordance with the agreement with the EU. We assume that deliveries to the EU and Norway will increase somewhat in the third quarter, says Henriksen.

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