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The hiring of twenty thousand professionals, a kind of vaccine navigator. All distribution in the hands of the Armed Forces, so the logistics operators were cut off. A great national hub identified by the Army from which the roads will depart to all corners of the country, even the most remote. The involvement (pro bono) of Eni and Poste for the monitoring of doses from arrival in the territory to administration. These are some of the planned innovations in the plan drawn up by the commissioner structure led by Domenico Arcuri for the largest mass vaccination campaign Italy has ever faced.
There are many unknowns and critical issues surrounding the plan, and the commissioner tried to dispel them, in a hearing at the Chamber’s Transportation Committee, starting first with the schedule. The entire population will have to be vaccinated early next summer. The idea is to vaccinate up to 28 million citizens in the first quarter of 2021, another 57 million doses to be administered in the second, another 74 million in the third quarter, and so on. In September, if all goes according to Arcuri’s predictions, all Italians will have had access to a double dose of the vaccine.
This is the theory, then there is the practice that often did not shine in the past. “We have audited everyone involved in transportation,” Raffaella Paita, president of the Transportation Commission, tells HuffPost, “because we do not want the errors seen with the masks or the Immuni app to be repeated, so we ask to get involved . constant of Parliament “.
How to get the roads to all corners of the country in a homogeneous and punctual way, avoiding delays and bottlenecks? We are talking about handling 150 million doses in eight / nine months. The Commissioner’s roadmap identifies two main phases. The former will make use almost exclusively of the drug Pfizer-BioNTech, the first to reach Europe and now known to all for the cold chain it requires, particularly rigid because it requires storage at all stages at temperatures below -70 °. The delivery, which will be borne exclusively by Pfizer without additional charges for the State, will be made in 300 centers identified by Arcuri and Regions: these are hospitals, and as is known, RSA health personnel and patients will undergo this first vaccination. about 1.7 million people. 87% of the 300 hospitals already have adequate cold rooms for rigid Cold chain of Pfizer’s drug, the remaining 13% will be provided by the commissioner. “We ask the Commissioner to acquire these cells in a timely manner, so that no one is left without them,” Paita asked immediately.
The difficult part, however, will come with the second phase, the mass vaccination in the strict sense with drugs that will be stored at ordinary temperatures, from 2 ° to 8 °. “For this phase the distribution model will be very different,” Arcuri said. “The vials will be sent by the large pharmaceutical companies to a large national hub identified by the Armed Forces, where they will be kept in maximum security.” From there they will then move, in mobile units, to the 1500 points already identified throughout the national territory, or the first 300 hospitals to which another 1200 of different types will be added, such as hospital pharmacies and Asl. The objective is to have one administration point for every 30 thousand inhabitants. Later, the Commissioner added, general practitioners, pediatricians and pharmacies will probably also participate.
But who will manage it? The team will be made up of a doctor, four nurses, and administrative staff. Arcuri has announced the short-term hiring of 20,000 professionals for the duration of the emergency. A kind of vaccine navigator that, before joining the service, must pass a training module, even remotely, carried out by the staff of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. “We will look for them through a request for expression of public interest that we will issue soon, and then we will coordinate their use together with the local administration points.”
The distribution in this second phase will be entirely the responsibility of the Armed Forces. Therefore, the logistics operators were isolated, except for the large warehouses of the drug chain with which the commissioner opened a debate table yesterday. But it will only be up to the military to transport the doses from the national hub to the 1,500 territorial garrisons and, from there, take care of the distribution of the last mile, reaching even the most inaccessible places and citizens who cannot move from home. “That’s fine with us, and we’re all busy cheering on the Army and Italy,” Ivano Russo, Confetra general manager, told HuffPost. “We had raised a matter of principle: it is not possible to draw up a Logistics Plan without even listening to the organizations that institutionally represent these sectors in dialogue with the Government and Parliament.” The difficulties of a transport plan of this magnitude are evident: “We need prior planning, based on knowledge of the territories, infrastructures, connections between ports and airports,” says Paita. “Also because we know very well what are the Italian infrastructure deficiencies, and we saw them, for example, in summer in Liguria.” However, Arcuri, at the end of the hearing, added that “if other contributions are needed, the logistics players will also be involved.”
The objective, in addition, is to guarantee access to the vaccine, regardless of the territory in which you live: “The distribution will be homogeneous, it is unthinkable that there may be differences between different areas of the country,” Arcuri said.
Then there is the follow-up phase, that is, the remote monitoring of each single dose from the moment it reaches the national territory until its administration and reporting in a computer database of the Ministry of Health. Two public companies, Poste and Eni, will take care of this: “They are creating for us a very advanced information system that will track every road at every step. A system that will activate the reservation, administration and reporting processes of each citizen, collecting data that will then be transferred to the information system of the Ministry ”. Poste and Eni will also be called to listen by the Transportation Commission: “We are planning to convene them, we will have to make sure that these institutions communicate with each other and with the others involved in the vaccination plan,” says Paita.
Finally, there is the awareness campaign: “We are organizing a homogeneous route for the entire territory, to make the vaccine known to all citizens.” Even on this “we are going to monitor,” explained Paita, “so that it is a broad and efficient campaign.” Arcuri has no doubts about it, since it has no doubts about the entire plan studied due to its structure: “Are we ready? Yes, we are “.
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