Caravans to be set up for COVID-19 vaccination of people with disabilities

Doctor Valeriu Gheorghita, coordinator of the national COVID-19 vaccination campaign, said on Sunday evening that mobile vaccination centres will be set up to provide immunisation to people having difficulties moving and those with disabilities. "On the one hand, there will be vaccination centres at hospitals that will vaccinate their own staff, and fixed vaccination centres will be set up along with mobile vaccination centers - caravans - that will ensure the vaccination of people having difficulties moving, for example in the countryside, or people with disabilities. Mobile vaccination teams will also ensure, in part, the vaccination of people in the essential critical infrastructure," the specialist told Digi 24 private broadcaster. He said that, in the best-case scenario, the first doses of vaccine are expected in Romania in the second half of December, and in the worst-case scenario, in January-February. "In the best case, we expect to have the first doses of vaccine available in the second half of December, at least from one manufacturing company. In the worst-case scenario, we will probably be talking about January-February," said Gheorghita. He added that there would be at least 2.4 million doses from AstraZeneca and probably as many from Pfizer. "Out of 1,200,000 doses, we can vaccinate about 600,000 people. At the moment, there are an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people in the medical system. We will surely cover more than the healthcare workers, such as the non-medical healthcare workers and those in social assistance and most likely we will start the vaccination campaign for vulnerable people - the elderly and those with chronic diseases - at the same time with the vaccination of people working in the critical infrastructure," the doctor said. Gheorghita mentioned that the main storage centre in Romania will be the Cantacuzino Institute. "In addition to the Cantacuzino Institute, there will be six more regional centres, at six military hospitals, which will be provided - and the equipment exists - with these minus 80 degrees Celsius freezers that have the capacity to store a large number of doses. (...) At minus 80 degrees Celsius the doses last for six months, but it is our duty to exhaust these doses as soon as possible, because we cannot expand the storage capacity indefinitely. We will always have tranches of vaccines that will be delivered to us and then we must ensure the consumption of these doses," said Gheorghita. He pointed out that the whole vaccination process will be carried out under a plan, especially for the medical and social assistance system and based on electronic appointments for the other categories of people; the appointment can be made either electronically, by telephone or through the family physicians, but all the data will be fed into the same common platform in order to have as clear a record as possible of the number of people immunised. AGERPRES (RO - author: Andreea Rotaru, editor: Irina Poenaru; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)