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The creation of a technical commission, to define the criteria in which the vaccine against covid-19 will be applied in the country, and a “working group” to operationalize this process, are the first steps taken by the General Directorate of Health to define the national vaccination strategy. The Minister of Health, Marta Temido, has said that the plan “will be announced in the coming days.”
The Technical Commission for Vaccination against covid-19 (CTVC) is made up of 11 specialists, who “have followed the evolution of knowledge about the SARS CoV-2 virus, about the clinical and epidemiology of covid-19 and about vaccines against the covid-19 in development or on vaccination in general ”, reads in the order of the General Directorate of Health (DGS).
Its mission is to provide technical advice on the strategy (s) to adopt, recommend priority vaccination groups and comment on the vaccines that are being made available in the national and international market. They will act as an advisory group to this entity.
Without referring directly to this new group, Minister Marta Temido explained at a press conference that the vaccination plan will be announced next week. The official recalled that there is a national technical vaccination commission, in charge of the introduction or withdrawal of vaccines from the National Vaccination Program.
Marta Temido also said that the vaccines will be transported by pharmaceutical companies and that they must all be stored in the same place, until they are distributed throughout the country and the Autonomous Communities.
Manuel Carmo Gomes and Raquel Guiomar in the group
The experts, who are meeting this Wednesday for the second time, must also propose and monitor the development of the studies on vaccination and vaccines against covid-19 used in the country, assess the need for training and methodology in their application, as well as how recommend measures of exception to vaccination in justified circumstances.
Among the specialists are the epidemiologist Manuel Carmo Gomes, a frequent presence at Infarmed meetings, the immunologist Luís Graça, from the Gulbenkian Institute of Sciences, and the virologist Raquel Guiomar, head of the Reference Laboratory for Flu Virus and other Respiratory Viruses , from the National Institute of Public Health Doctor Ricardo Jorge (INSA).
The commission will be coordinated by the internal medicine doctor Válter Bruno Ribeiro Fonseca, director of the services of the Department of Quality in Health, of the DGS. Pediatrician José Gonçalo Pereira Marques, from Hospital Santa María, will be the deputy coordinator.
Among the remaining members are the pharmacists Diana da Silva Costa, Ema Paulino Pires and Maria de Fátima Ventura, the biologist Teresa Alves Fernandes, the nurse Maria de Lurdes Silva, and the general and family physician Luísa Maria Rocha Vaz.
Planning and logistics
At the same time, the DGS created a “working group”, led by the former Secretary of State for Health Francisco Ramos, which will have the collaboration of the Armed Forces. “The Armed Forces participate in this process of identifying how the plan should be [de vacinação] and then he will participate in the execution when there are vaccines, ”Defense Minister Gomes Cravinho was quoted as saying by the Lusa news agency.
The working group will have the mission of putting the whole process into operation. “There is a commission that will decide who receives them first and which vaccines will be administered”, but it will also be necessary to operationalize the logistics of storage, distribution and administration, and also monitor the people who will be vaccinated in the meantime. That will be the mission of this team: to ensure that all these areas work in an interconnected way, JN learned from the source of the process.
The measure is in line with European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen’s call for member states to start “preparing logistics for the launch of hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines.” We are talking about millions of syringes in the chain. refrigerated transport, vaccination centers, professional training ”, he said.
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