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December 24 or 26: on one of these days, the first doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine arrive in Portugal and must be delivered to the hospitals in Central Lisbon (which includes São José and Curry Cabral) and São João, in Porto, to be administered to health professionals. The first delivery is symbolic – only 9,750 doses – and was agreed at the level of the European Commission, which is centralizing all purchases so that the historic vaccination process begins in all the countries of the community at the same time.
At the beginning of January, the first large batch arrives in Portugal, consisting of 303 thousand doses – all from Pfizer – that allow the first large stage to be completed at the end of January: 75% of residents and professionals in homes vaccinated against covid-19 ( 118 thousand residents and home professionals and 21 thousand health professionals).
Homes will, by the way, be the first group with full protection, in mid-February, according to the estimates of the working group, headed by Francisco Ramos and which was created to coordinate the process. Their vaccination will be carried out by mobile teams that travel to the establishments, provided that they do not have nursing professionals. Health professionals, on the other hand, will only be able to be vaccinated in mid-March, while patients with comorbidities will only finish the process in April.
But the certainties about the process end here, everything else adds to the uncertainty. First, because vaccine production has stagnated. First, Pfizer, which has already reviewed its deliveries to Europe in the first quarter, which in Portugal translates into less than 123,000 people vaccinated at the start of the program. Also the Astrazeneca vaccine (which still does not have an approval date by the European authorities) warned that it will have 865 thousand fewer doses than it thought in the first quarter (which would give 432 thousand Portuguese). In addition to this, the sixth vaccine agreed with the EU (Sonofi) had problems in testing, causing it to be erased from the forecast maps.
So because, given these uncertainties in the distribution, the working group chose not to distribute all the doses as soon as they arrived, saving one second for each person who has been vaccinated (and another 15 thousand due to caution, due to possible accidents).
With this, the new forecasts of the Portuguese authorities suggest that it is possible to vaccinate just over 1.5 million people in April. It is little more than the first priority group, which includes 950,000 people. This if it is confirmed that by then there will be three vaccines on the market; if only Pfizer has been approved, there will only be 600,000 people in the first quarter. In the work team, for all these reasons, it is admitted that the calendar ends up adjusting downwards.
Thus, all users and home care professionals are expected to be vaccinated with the two doses in mid-February, health professionals at the end of March, people aged 50 years and over and with diseases at risk of covid. -19 (such as coronary artery disease or heart failure) and other professionals (armed forces, security forces and other critical services) in April.
The calendar will slide like this: instead of two months (the most optimistic scenario admitted by Francisco Ramos two weeks ago), it is already certain that only in April will the vaccination of all priority groups be concluded.
One more detail: dAnd according to the working group, people who have already been infected with Covid-19 will be able to receive the vaccine.
Meanwhile, the working group is already starting the organization of the process, including the databases of the users who will be candidates for this first phase. The news now is that people will be called by SMS, having to confirm with a “YES” or “NO” if they want to be vaccinated. If so, the appointment will also be made by SMS. The Government has already begun to distribute around 20 thousand mobile phones to Primary Health Care units that do not have material to contact users.
