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The anti-Covid vaccine plan is ready: 202 million doses will be available from the first quarter of 2021. Initially, the vaccine will go to medical and health personnel and rsa: first to those over 80 years of age, then at 60 / 70 and gradually to the others. groups such as essential workers, including schoolchildren. There will be military participation. This is what anticipates, as we know from majority sources, the note on the vaccination plan that the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, illustrated today to the majority group leaders at the meeting in Palazzo Chigi, also in the presence of the Prime Minister Giuseppe. With you.
The plan foresees the implementation of the vaccination monitoring network, with an ad hoc information system connected to the regional systems. There will be double monitoring, with vaccination surveillance and immunological surveillance. As Speranza has already confirmed, according to a European perspective, we will not start with the provision of the vaccination obligation but with persuasion and information. The goal is to achieve herd immunity, which means vaccinating 40 million Italians. Among the first vaccines available in Italy is that of Pfizer, which will arrive between January 23 and 26 and the doses will go directly to the 300 identified arrival points, which are hospitals. The plan also foresees that the distribution of the vaccine will be fully state-owned: management will be centralized and the vaccine will be distributed in accordance with medical and scientific decisions.
After a first phase in which vaccination will affect the highest risk categories, mass vaccinations will be carried out using large public spaces such as gyms, open spaces and fairs. All this taking into account that in the current state of knowledge each dose needs a booster and the duration of immunity is unknown. In the Speranza plan it is also observed that the third possible wave cannot coincide with the vaccination campaign. To do this, the goal now is to bend the epidemiological curve. Meanwhile, the vaccine race continues apace among affected companies. Biontech and Pfizer have submitted the request for authorization of their vaccine to the EMA (European Medicines Agency), which is expected to give its response on December 29 and January 12 to the American company Moderna. Instead, AstraZeneca has announced that it will deliver all documentation for approval of the vaccine, which it is developing with the University of Oxford, to regulatory agencies within 7 days. The EMA for its part has ensured an evaluation with accelerated times for the authorization requests presented by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna, provided that the data presented are sufficiently robust to draw conclusions on the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine. The National Bioethics Committee also intervenes in the debate that, in an opinion on the subject, invites us not to “reduce the time of experimentation, essential at the scientific, bioethical and biolegal level, to guarantee the quality and protection of the participants. Furthermore, according to the Committee, the mandatory nature of the vaccine in emergency cases should not be ruled out, especially for the professional groups most exposed to infection and its transmission. Finally, the CNB invited us to consider the vaccine as a “common good” and to make an “ethical reflection in the context of distribution options.” For this, pharmaceutical companies must also recognize “their social responsibility in this serious pandemic condition” for the purposes of production and distribution.
