After two weeks of persuasion, last weekend, the Minister of Health agreed to open a so-called live queue for vaccination, which would be open to anyone wishing to be vaccinated, regardless of belonging to one of the priority groups. The experiment showed that there are many more people who want to be vaccinated than the state can provide vaccines.
8,640 people were vaccinated in three days, but several vaccination centers announced that they were closing the queues only a few hours after they opened.
Commenting on what happened over the weekend, the head of the Vaccination Project Bureau Eva Juhņēviča admits that the limited amount of vaccines creates tension. If the required amount of vaccines were available, queues would not have to be closed before the scheduled closing hours of the centers. "The amount of vaccines available determines how many people can be vaccinated per day," says E. Juhņēviča.
Vitālijs Orlovs, a doctor representing Harmony (Saskaņa), who works in the Social and Employment Matters Committee of the Saeima, believes that the priority groups of vaccination should be abandoned altogether and everyone who wants to be vaccinated should be allowed to.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health Daniels Pavļuts is already presenting the new information technology platform ViVat - the unified vaccination network - which will ensure more convenient applying for the population to receive the vaccine.
The new platform will bring together different vaccination establishments in a single network. Medical institutions will not have to change the system already used, as ViVat will be able to exchange data with existing technologies in the institutions.
The new platform will connect the existing calendars in a single system, as well as make it easier for medical institutions to order vaccines against Covid-19, to see patients belonging to one of the priority groups to be vaccinated.
Do you think that the introduction of a live vaccination queue has paid off?
I think, yes - it has.
Looking at the queue at the vaccination center on Krasta Street last Friday, I noticed that there were a lot of young people there. I feel that they are planning to leave Latvia for a trip or to work abroad for a while, and seeing the situation develop they think, and I think so too, that it will not be possible for them to travel to those countries without vaccination documents.
I think it could be repeated, we could look at what the public response is, then we could think about how to order the vaccine and use it. If the situation does not change, that there are people who want to be vaccinated, but with Sputnik V, not with AstraZeneca or another vaccine, and if Sputnik is accepted by the European Medicines Agency and the vaccine is produced in a certified plant, then we should think - do we want to play politics or vaccinate people. You need to think about how to vaccinate the part that wants to be vaccinated but does not want AstraZeneca.
Perhaps it would be useful to abolish all priority groups and allow everyone who really wants to be vaccinated to do so in the live queue?
I agree. We will have a committee meeting next week, and we have decided to discuss this as well. From a purely practical point of view, I agree that if there are people who want to be vaccinated but have to wait until June and later, and there are people who have the opportunity now but they refuse to, everyone should be given the opportunity to be vaccinated if they want to.
A parliamentary committee of inquiry will soon be set up to evaluate the mistakes made in overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic. What do you think the members of the committee should focus on as a matter of priority?
Attention should be paid to the purchasing procedure, how the vaccines were ordered, who decided to buy specifically one or the other vaccine and in what quantities, who offered to base our vaccination plan on AstraZeneca and Johnson&Johnson.
I might understand their position because the storage conditions for these vaccines are very acceptable. The price too. AstraZeneca is one of the cheapest vaccines. But the general situation with vaccines was not taken into account. It turned out that ordering did not mean receiving. At least that's how it looks.
I have heard that a representative from AstraZeneca has always been present at the consultation stage when deciding which vaccine to order. If a committee is set up, it should understand what was the role of this representative who attended these meetings.
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