Over 3,000 family physicians’ offices have joined the anti-COVID vaccination programme and will start vaccinating citizens, in a first phase, with Moderna and Johnson&Johnson vaccines, military doctor Valeriu Gheorghiță, the coordinator of the national vaccination campaign, told Digi24 on Thursday evening.
“The project of including family doctors in the vaccination programme is already concluded, it kicks off on May 4, the entire infrastructure for that is already established,” said Valeriu Gheorghiță.
He revealed that “around 3,800” family doctors joined this programme, meaning “roughly a third” of the total number of family doctors that have contracts with the National Health Insurances House. Gheorghiță added that initial estimations point to an intention of 50-55% of family doctors joining the vaccination campaign.
“Great part of the family doctors are already involved in the vaccination centres that are already operational. It is very difficult to vaccinate in one’s own cabinet, to be in the vaccination centres at the same time and take care of the patients,” he argued.
Asked what vaccines family doctors will use in their offices, Gheorghiță said “there were three options on the table”: AstraZeneca, Johnson&Johnson and Moderna, but only the last two will be delivered.
“If the family doctors require it, the AstraZeneca wil be delivered. We don’t want to insist at this point to start with the AstraZeneca jab, as there is no great demand for it at this moment and I would like the project of involving family doctors to be successful and not the be held back”.
The military doctor did not rule out that Romania should remain with excess stocks of AstraZeneca vaccines, yet adding that the target of 10 million people vaccinated by September can be reached and that the forecast includes only on the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines.
Gheorghiță yet underlined that “it is an extremely tough decision to give up an easy to distribute vaccine, which has a perfectly good safety profile.