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Portugal will receive almost 80 thousand doses of the vaccine from the Pfizer / BioNTech consortium in two deliveries even before the end of the year – the first already on Saturday, December 26 and the second on Monday, December 28 -, announced today the Minister of Health Vaccination begins this Sunday, with 9,750 doses arriving in three days in Portuguese hospitals.
The anticipated arrival of doses of the Pfizer vaccine will allow 60% of the professionals who have already been identified by hospitals as priority to be vaccinated in this first phase, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Initially, the number of vaccines planned for Portugal in 2020 was 9,750, but the minister announced that the pharmaceutical company anticipated the arrival of another 70,200 doses from December 28, which will also allow vaccination to begin earlier in the autonomous communities. Marta Temido said.
This is a very important circumstance because it already allows 9,750 vaccines also to the autonomous regions of Madeira and Azores and to continue expanding the vaccination of professionals identified as direct providers of care for people suspected of or ill with Covid-19, depending on the proportion that we have tried to maintain in a context of managing the quantity of vaccines that is not unlimited ”.
According to the minister, “this change in the delivery schedule does not mean that the total number of vaccines will change in the first quarter,” but it does allow the expansion of the vaccine to more health professionals at the beginning of the process.
This Wednesday Marta Temido made a brief situation about the Vaccination Plan against covid-19, at the Ajuda Palace, in Lisbon, without the possibility of questions from the Media.
The first batches of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against covid-19 destined for countries of the European Union (EU) left today from the Belgian factory in Puurs, where they are manufactured, after the green light on Monday by the European authorities .
Questioned by AFP, Pfizer refused to clarify which EU populations the batches were destined for, with one of the trucks with Polish registration.
“For the first hospitals that have already identified priority professionals for vaccination, we hope to be able to vaccinate about 60% of those who have been identified,” said the minister.
Marta Temido also assured that now it will be possible to “expand the universe of professionals to vaccinate and expand the hospitals involved”, hoping to reach all the hospitals of the National Health Service “with this first delivery of vaccines.”
Last Monday, the European Commission authorized the placing on the market of the vaccine against covid-19 developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, hours after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave its favorable scientific opinion.
That same day, Marta Temido said that health professionals from the university hospital centers of Porto, São João, Coimbra, North Lisbon and Central Lisbon would be the first to be vaccinated against covid-19.
The EU had previously announced that the first vaccinations would start between December 27 and 29 in all member states. The distribution, which will begin in January and extend through 2021, will be proportional to the population of nations.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,718,209 deaths derived from more than 77.9 million cases of contagion worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
Porto Catholic Study Finds Vaccine Anxiety Rising
However, it also emerged today that an unpublished study by the Catholic University of Porto concluded that anxiety about the covid-19 vaccine “is increasing” and that most participants will only take it if they have “information on safety and efficiency” .
“There is a growing increase in the level of anxiety among the Portuguese, which affects not only mental health, but also decision-making about vaccination,” Patrícia Batista, a researcher at the Laboratory of Human Neurobehavior of the Catholic. from Porto.
