Over 6.5 million Romanians have been vaccinated against COVID since the start of the vaccination campaign in Romania, on December 27, 2019, said the coordinator of the vaccination campaign, Valeriu Gheorghiță. Over one million have been vaccinated in the last five weeks, since the pace of the campaign has increased, in the conditions in which Romania has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world.
Gheorghiță said that 5.97 million people among those 6.5 million vaccinated have received the complete scheme, and 731,000 also got the booster (third dose of the anti-Covid jab).
Almost 41% of the adults over 18 have got vaccinated against coronavirus in Romania and 39% of the Romanians over 12 years old. Overall , 33% of the total population is currently vaccinated against Covid in Romania.
In Romania, 150,639 people have been vaccinated against Covid in the last 24 hours, of which 111,033 with the first dose. Also, on Tuesday, Romania exceeded the threshold of 6 million people vaccinated with the complete scheme. Of those who were vaccinated with the first dose on the last day, 56,072 were immunized with Johnson & Johnson, 53,517 with Pfizer, 1,419 with Moderna and 25 with AstraZeneca.
Vaccination marathons in Bucharest every weekend by the year-end
The coordinator of the national vaccination campaign announced that vaccination marathons will be held in Bucharest every weekend until the end of the year, and they will be open up to midnight.
“Considering the current upward trend in the vaccination demand, we decided to have vaccination marathons in a vaccination center in every district of the Capital city every weekend until the end of the year, to provide a higher access of all people who want to take the jab“, Gheorghiță said, adding that the vaccination centers will be open until midnight.
“In the upcoming days we’ll announce which are the centers with extended hours to host these marathons. We proposed they remain open from 8 a.m. to midnight and to have them sanitized during the night”, he explained.
Valeriu Gheorghiţă also announced that the third dose (booster) of Moderna vaccine will be available in Romania with a quantity of serum halved. He explained that the company’s new data show that in this case, the immune response is the same as at full dose, but that the frequency and intensity of side effects are lower.
The halved dose is 50 micrograms versus 100 micrograms.
The European Medicines Agency has recommended the use of the booster dose (dose 3) of the vaccine from Moderna for people who received the first vaccination schedule with the same serum after at least 6-8 months after the second dose.
“For the booster dose, a dose halved compared to the dose used in the initial schedule is recommended, so during this week we will have a meeting within the National Committee for Coordinating the anti-Covid Vaccination Activities and most likely we will adopt the same recommendation, which means that probably the earlier starting next week, we will recommend the administration of a half dose of vaccine from the Moderna company for the booster dose, after at least 6 months “, said Valeriu Gheorghiţă.