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“It is not known how fast we will be able to get AstraZeneca two, three or four weeks in advance, so we will not be able to actively vaccinate it and we will have to maintain the guarantee of the second vaccine,” the mayor told BNS on Monday.
“Perhaps there is a more serious problem here, otherwise, it would seem that we are grafting it, because there are many people who want it, factories, etc.”, he added.
The municipality expects to receive 3,000 each this week. Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine is expected to continue to be administered to the elderly and chronically ill patients, while AstraZeneca is likely to be used in only about a third of the batch.
“Yes, they will not move because we do not know if we will have another reinforcement shipment in May,” the mayor said.
According to A. Visockas, for this reason it will no longer be appropriate to compare municipalities according to their vaccination rates and vaccine residues, since the reasons why this vaccine is not used will become important.
In Šiauliai, according to the mayor, there are more people who want to get vaccinated than the available vaccine, so the municipality would easily use the full amount.
“We have always used vaccines up to one unit so far. “It was different last week because we couldn’t do it, we had to save up for the booster shot,” he said.
Šiauliai residents went to Vilnius to get vaccinated
The week before, part of the vaccines from other municipalities, including Šiauliai, were redistributed to Vilnius. A. Visockas was outraged that by opening the capital to a lower priority and not restricting vaccinations only to city residents, Šiauliai residents also flocked to Vilnius.
According to him, this not only creates a useless situation in which residents of Šiauliai, instead of getting vaccinated in their city, have to go 400 kilometers to Vilnius, but there is also the risk that they will become infected when they go to the municipality with a bad epidemiological situation.
“Enough Šiauliai residents went to Vilnius. Instead of 10 kilometers here, they had to drive 400, and if I get the second shot it would be a thousand kilometers in total, which is absurd, “said A. Visockas angrily.
People with chronic diseases, as well as people over 65, are currently being vaccinated in Šiauliai.
So far, the mayor has said he can’t say when he will move to the 55+ group.
He said that in the presence of such inequalities, the process itself was distorted, which is why he called on the ministry to take measures to better control the process or restrict the fact that Vilnius residents would receive the vaccine in this municipality.
“The worst way is that after that the people from Šiauliai transferred that vaccine: in other words, it was not the Vilnius resident who received it, but the Šiauliai resident, only in Vilnius. There is no logic in that action, “said A. Visockas.
“I feel sorry for everyone who was forced to drive,” he said.
According to data from the Department of Statistics, currently in Šiauliai at least one dose of 21.9% has been vaccinated. population. The national average is 24.7 percent.
