Valeriu Gheorghita spoke about the way in which vaccination will be carried out in the offices of family doctors in Romania, the authorities will allow them to administer the vaccines against the Coronavirus like any other vaccine available so far.
Valeriu Gheorghita says that only 30% of family doctors in Romania have so far shown their willingness to administer this vaccine, fewer than the authorities hoped, but they will receive doses for the immunization of those who want it.
"We have a centralized situation at the national level, there are 3.028 family doctors who opted to participate in the vaccination campaign through their own offices, out of the total of 10.940 family doctors who are in a contractual relationship with the National Health Insurance House, which means a percentage of about 30%. This is less than we expected and as much as we estimated from the preliminary available data. The instruction based on which the vaccination process will be carried out through family doctors' offices was also developed. I would just like to mention that starting tomorrow the pilot project in Timiș with the 50 family doctors is already starting.
Family doctors have been trained on how to carry out this stage of vaccination, specific procedures and instructions have been sent, operationalized in the national electronic vaccination register, the appropriate IDs for entering vaccinated persons, sanitary materials and vaccine doses are already allocated and are to be distributed today to start vaccination from April 7, that is, tomorrow.
What does this instruction provide? First of all, vaccines that can be cold-chained will be allocated in GP surgeries, vaccines that can be stored between 2 and 8 degrees and also distributed under the same temperature conditions, which which means we have two options at the moment: the vaccine from AstraZeneca and the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, depending on the number of doses we are going to receive.
Vaccines and medical supplies, including pre-filled adrenaline kits, pre-filled adrenaline syringes, EpiPens, will be allocated to each family practice. Likewise, people's appointments for vaccination will not be made through the scheduling platform, they are basically done on the open lists at family doctors from each doctor's own list. As such, the family doctors register the patients from the patient list and allocate a number of about 10 people to vaccination per day, bearing in mind that the AstraZeneca vaccine is distributed in multi-dose vials of 10 doses and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is distributed in vials of 5 doses, so we must have between 5, 10 or more people depending on the number of those who want to be vaccinated. Vaccinations, as I said, in GP surgeries will take place outside of the GP's regular working hours.
Each family doctor will establish his own vaccination schedule, depending on the hours contracted with the National Insurance House, so that there is a schedule strictly intended for vaccinating people who want to against COVID-19. Also, a circuit according to the already existing one will be ensured, because we know, vaccination activities take place in the offices of family doctors within the National Immunization Program. This is how vaccination will be carried out in family doctors' offices."
