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To the 9,750 doses of vaccines against covid-19 scheduled for the 26th, another 70,200 will be added two days later, announced the Minister of Health, Marta Temido, in a statement to the press.
Marta Temido said that in this way the health authorities will be able to allocate vaccines to the autonomous regions of Madeira and Azores and extend vaccination to health professionals as established.
The first professionals to receive the vaccine, from the 27th, are from the university hospital centers of Oporto, São João, Coimbra, North Lisbon and Lisbon Center.
The Health Minister reinforced the idea that it is an anticipation of the doses planned for the first quarter of 2021, so for now there are no indications that there are more doses than those planned at the end of that period.
The National Medicines Authority (Infarmed) today made available on its website an area with updated information on vaccines against covid-19.
According to Infarmed, this specific area appears after the approval by the European Medicines Agency and the European Commission of the Comirnaty vaccine, developed by the BioNTech and Pfizer laboratories.
In addition to a space with “frequently asked questions”, Infarmed provides information on the vaccine and its approval process, a summary of the characteristics of the drug and a list with useful links to various national and international entities.
The Portuguese Allergology Society warned this Wednesday that the Pfizer vaccine should not be administered to people with a history of severe allergic reactions, despite acknowledging that these reactions to vaccines are rare.
In a statement, the Portuguese Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (SPAIC) says that, despite the clinical information available on cases in which allergic reactions to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for covid-19 were suspected, it is still very limited, “there is no increased risk of adverse effects of the vaccine in patients with asthma, allergic rhinitis or eczema.”
On Monday, the European Commission authorized the marketing of the vaccine against covid-19 developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, hours after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave its favorable scientific opinion.
In addition to Comirnaty, the European Commission already has a portfolio with six other potential vaccines, developed by AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Johnson & Johnson, CureVac and Moderna.
Switzerland, which is not part of the European Union, began the vaccination plan against covid-19 on Wednesday. A 90-year-old woman living in a household was the first person in the country to receive the vaccine.
The woman, who lives in the Lucerne region of central Switzerland, received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, just four days after it was approved by national regulators.
“I am very happy that we can now start vaccination in the canton of Lucerne,” Guido Graf, head of health services in the region, said in a statement.
In light of the news of new strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the German company BioNTech, responsible with Pfizer for the world’s first licensed vaccine against covid-19, said it could supply another vaccine “in six weeks” by if anything. mutation of the virus that renders the current one ineffective.
“We are technically capable of delivering a new vaccine in six weeks,” said scientist and businessman Ugur Sahin, from the German laboratory BioNTech. However, the pharmaceutical company says it is sure that the vaccine works in the case of the new variant detected in the United Kingdom, although it stresses that more studies are needed.
