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VACCINE

New plan boosts Denmark’s Pfizer vaccine deliveries

Pharma company Pfizer has revised its plan for deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine to Denmark in the coming months.

Published: 16 April 2021 17:11 CEST
New plan boosts Denmark’s Pfizer vaccine deliveries
Photo: Mario Tama/AFP/Ritzau Scanpix

The plan has been updated after the company reached a deal with the European Union to expedite deliveries of its vaccine which had been scheduled for later in 2021.

Pfizer/BioNTech now expects to deliver an extra 700,000 doses of its vaccine to Denmark in the second quarter of this year. The figure was confirmed by the Danish national infectious disease agency State Serum Institute (SSI) via its website.

The week beginning Monday April 26th will see at least 270,000 doses of the company’s vaccine delivered to Denmark on a weekly basis. That will further increase from May 31st, with between 388,440 and 389,610 doses arriving each week for the five weeks following on from that date.

The numbers are stated on a summary available on the SSI website.

News of the extra doses was welcomed by the agency’s deputy director Ole Jensen.

“In a situation in which the AstraZeneca vaccine will be playing a smaller role in the vaccination of the Danish public it is very positive that Pfizer can push forward deliveries which we should have had later in the year,” Jensen said in a written comment.

Denmark confirmed earlier this week it will withdraw the AstraZeneca vaccine from the country’s Covid-19 vaccination programme.

The Nordic country said on Tuesday it would stop using the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine altogether, becoming the first European country to do so over suspected rare but serious side effects.

READ ALSO: Denmark withdraws AstraZeneca from Covid-19 vaccination programme

On Wednesday, the EU it would get 50 million Pfizer vaccine doses earlier than expected.

That was initially reported as giving an additional 650,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to be sent to Denmark in the second quarter of 2021.

But the latest update from SSI suggests the figure will actually be 700,000. The new plan for weekly deliveries was published on Friday.

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COVID-19

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

Sweden's Public Health Agency is recommending that those above the age of 80 should receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn, as it shifts towards a longer-term strategy for the virus.

Published: 23 December 2022 10:53 CET
Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

In a new recommendation, the agency said that those living in elderly care centres, and those above the age of 80 should from March 1st receive two vaccinations a year, with a six month gap between doses. 

“Elderly people develop a somewhat worse immune defence after vaccination and immunity wanes faster than among young and healthy people,” the agency said. “That means that elderly people have a greater need of booster doses than younger ones. The Swedish Public Health Agency considers, based on the current knowledge, that it will be important even going into the future to have booster doses for the elderly and people in risk groups.” 

READ ALSO: 

People between the ages of 65 and 79 years old and young people with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, poor kidney function or high blood pressure, are recommended to take one additional dose per year.

The new vaccination recommendation, which will start to apply from March 1st next year, is only for 2023, Johanna Rubin, the investigator in the agency’s vaccination programme unit, explained. 

She said too much was still unclear about how long protection from vaccination lasted to institute a permanent programme.

“This recommendation applies to 2023. There is not really an abundance of data on how long protection lasts after a booster dose, of course, but this is what we can say for now,” she told the TT newswire. 

It was likely, however, that elderly people would end up being given an annual dose to protect them from any new variants, as has long been the case with influenza.

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