Norway has secured vaccinations for 3.9 million Norwegians – VG

Norway has reached an agreement on 1.9 million doses of Moderna, the vaccine that can be approved in January. Sweden’s vaccine coordinator Richard Bergström reports to VG.

In the first quarter he estimates that we will receive 150,000 doses, but now they are working to see if it is possible to get more. Doses will be significantly higher starting in March and April.

It is already known that Norway will get:

• 2.5 million doses of Pfizer vaccine (550,000 in Q1)
• 3.3 million doses of Oxford / AstraZeneca (1.5 million doses in February and March)

This means that Norway has so far obtained 7.7 million doses, enough to vaccinate 3,850,000 people. In Norway there are 4,265,000 people over the age of 18.

The NIPH estimates that around 75 percent will accept a vaccine, which means that in practice we may have met Norway’s vaccine needs with these three vaccines.

And even more can come

There are a total of six vaccines that Norway can access through the EU system: Pfizer / BioNTech candidates, Moderna, Oxford / AstraZeneca, Curevac, Sanofi / GSK and Johnson & Johnson.

Below you can click on the different vaccines to read more:

Which ones will come when?

Bergström believes that Oxford / AstraZeneca is also around the corner:

– We are waiting for data from the American study, it should be ready at any moment. Then you could wait for approval by the end of January, he says.

The calculation of the number of doses from Pfizer to Norway in the coming weeks will be as follows:

• 50,000 this Christmas
• 40,000 a week until all doses have arrived

– It is a great advantage that we get a constant delivery of the doses, so you don’t have to worry about the next delivery of doses, says Bergström.

Section leader Are Stuwitz Berg at FHI says that even distribution means they have to think of new things:

– We thought we would get rarer and bigger deliveries. This more uniform delivery increases predictability, but we have to think differently about how we ship to municipalities, he tells VG, adding:

– This will give a smaller amount of doses at a time, and there are many municipalities, partly small, in Norway and it will be demanding with many small deliveries.

Nursing homes in the Oslo area will be the first.

The next vaccine arrival dates are, according to FHI:

• December 26: 10,000 doses
• December 28: 40,000 doses

5,000 vaccine in space Christmas

The NIPH is sticking to the plan to vaccinate 5,000 nursing home residents in Oslo and surrounding areas, because planning began before the additional 40,000 doses were learned.

– For now, we are analyzing whether it is better to save on the 40,000 doses in the freezers until after the New Year.

– Why?

– It has to do with logistics. There is a difference between delivering to Oslo and to an island community in a few days. Furthermore, it is not certain that all municipalities are prepared to receive. Even if the plans are clear, it is not the same as being ready in such a short time.

So FHI would rather make sure planning is in place to prevent vaccines from being wasted

– Then we have to move our legs here and there. There are not hundreds of people working on this.