Working hard to prepare for vaccination:

Across the country, municipal chief doctors, administrators, health personnel, and municipal employees are working at full speed.

They should make a plan for how the coronary vaccine will be stored, transported, distributed, and injected in their municipality. And the plan should be ready by Friday.

– It’s intense and challenging work, says Tonje Vågårøy.

Vågårøy is the vaccine coordinator in Bærum, the fifth largest municipality in Norway. Together with 30 colleagues, he is working on planning what will happen when Bærum receives the first doses of vaccine.

– There is so much we have to think about. New logistical problems and challenges are constantly emerging, says Vågårøy.

Many headaches

There is much to vote for when thousands of Norwegians must be vaccinated in a short time.

– This vaccine requires completely different logistics than previous vaccines, says Vågårøy.

Pfizer’s vaccine must be stored at least 70 degrees below zero and has a shelf life of only five days after it is out of the freezer. In addition, everyone should receive two doses of the vaccine, exactly at 21-day intervals.

All of these details have created headaches and challenges for Vågårøy and others responsible for planning vaccination.

– It’s the details that make it demanding. We don’t want any of the long-awaited vaccines to go to waste, so we need to plan everything carefully, says Vågårøy.

Challenging with a short deadline

Also in the neighboring municipality of Asker, many people work hard.

– Suddenly they told us that we only had two weeks left to make a plan. It’s not an easy task, even though we were already on the right track, says municipal chief physician Meera Grepp.

Although Grepp has been working on this for several months, there is one thing in particular that makes the job very demanding.

– There are so many things we still don’t know. When do we receive the vaccine? How many doses do we receive? In fact, we don’t even know if the Pfizer vaccine will be the one we get first, says Grepp.

Prepare in time

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Erna Solberg may reveal that it is Oslo and the capital’s municipalities that will receive the first doses of vaccine.

This means that Asker may be among the first municipalities to receive the vaccine.

The municipal chief says they may be ready to place the first syringes for nursing home residents on short notice.

– I still think that the most important thing is that this is done properly, safely and efficiently. It doesn’t have much to say about the infection situation if we set the first dose on December 29 or January 6, Grepp says.

He also hopes that everyone can help where necessary to make vaccination as easy and effective as possible.

– Now everyone has to intervene on the day of vaccination. We encourage all family members to help the elderly living at home to and from the vaccination site, says Grepp.

These are vaccinated first

In the municipality of Bærum, they are also ready to put the first vaccines already in the Christmas space. Vaccine coordinator Tonje Vågårøy has the plan ready for how the vaccine will be distributed.

The first to receive the vaccine in Bærum are those living in nursing homes. The vaccine will be administered by employees already working at the nursing home to minimize the spread of infection.

Then it is the turn of the patients in the risk group.

– Then it is natural that we use family doctors and let them vaccinate their patients at risk. We start with the oldest and keep going down, says Vågårøy.

When all of the risk groups have been vaccinated, it will be the health personnel who will receive their dose, and finally the municipality will be able to begin mass vaccination of the rest of the population. Then it may be relevant to use sports halls and schools.

– There is a lot we have to think about and plan for. But we are on the right track and eventually we will reach the goal, says Vågårøy.